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HOW TO READ 
. POETRY 



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BY 

ETHEL M. COLSON TW^ ' 



The magic light that springs 
From the deep soul of things 
When, called by their true name, 
Their essence is set free; 
The work, illuminate, 
Showing the soul's estate, 
Baring the hearts of men; 
Poetry! 

Annie Laurette Laney 




CHICAGO 

A. C. McCLURG & CO. 

1918 



ft\l° 






Copyright 

A. C. McClurg & Co. 

1918 



Published November, 1918 



W. F. HAU, PRINTING. COMPANY, CHICAGO 



:INTING.COMI*Af 



NOV 21 1918 
©CU506671 



iHj» bear iUotfjer 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 



For permission to quote poems reprinted, 
wholly or in part, in this volume, grateful 
acknowledgments are tendered the following 
publishers and poets: — 



The Poetry Lovers, New York, through Florence Wil- 
kinson Evans: the poetic definition of "Poetry" by Annie 
Laurette Laney used on title page. 

The Youth's Companion Company: "Rainy Days" by 
Mabel Earle. 

Charles Scribner's Sons: " Invictus " from Poems by 
W. E. Henley, "The Flight of Youth" by Richard Henry 
Stoddard, and " Today I Went Among the Mountain 
Folk " from The Cycle's Rim by Olive Tilf ord Dargan. 

Ralph Fletcher Seymour: "Song of an April Fool" 
from Songs of the Skokie and Other Poems by Anne Hig- 
ginson Spicer and " The Shop " from Profiles from China 
by Eunice Tietjens. 

George H. Doran Company: "Trees" from Trees and 
Other Poems by Joyce Kilmer. 

The John C. Winston Company: "A Cyprian Woman," 
also known as " Under Dusky Laurel Leaf " from The 
Factories with Other Lyrics by Margaret Widdemer. 

The Independent Company for " The Cornucopia of 
Red and Green Comfits " by Amy Lowell. 

Alfred A. Knopf: "Women Before a Shop" from Ezra 
Pound's Lustra. 

Alfred A. Knopf and Alfred Kreymborg: " Ing " by 
Walter Conrad Arensberg, included in Others, 1917. 



Acknowledgments 



Houghton Mifflin Company: " Oread " and " Sea Gods " 
from Sea Garden by " H. D.," " Rain Poem " and " Over 
the Roof -Tops " from Irradiations by John Gould Fletcher, 
"Paradox" from The Door of Dreams by Jessie B. Rit- 
tenhouse, and Longfellow's " Morituri Salutamus." 

The Macmillan Company: "Elsa Wertman" and 
" Hamilton Greene " from The Spoon River Anthology 
by Edgar Lee Masters, " I Love My Life " from You 
and I by Harriet Monroe, " Flammonde " from The Man 
Against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson, and 
" Spring Night " from Rivers to the Sea by Sara Teasdale. 

Henry Holt and Company: " Birches " from Mountain 
Interval, and " October " from A Boy's Will by Robert 
Frost, " Days," and " The Four Brothers " from Chicago 
Poems, and " The Corn Huskers " by Carl Sandburg. 

John Lane Company: "The Soldier" from Rupert 
Brooke's Poems, and "What of the Darkness?" from the 
English Poems of Richard Le Gallienne. 

D. Appleton and Company: " Thanatopsis " from the 
Collected Poems of William Cullen Bryant. 

Duffield & Company: "A Club Man's Requiem" by 
Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi. 

Zona Ga> for " Mother." 

Mitchell Kennerley: "It Rained All Day" from The 
Quiet Singer and Other Poems by Charles Hanson Towne. 

Frederick A. Stokes Company: "The Barrel Organ" 
from the Collected Poems of Alfred Noyes. 

The Century Co. for "The Night Court" by Ruth Com- 
fort Mitchell. 

John Vance Cheney: "The Happiest Heart." 



FOREWORD 



It may be plainly stated, in beginning, that 
this little book is in no sense a didactic or tech- 
nical treatise, that it sheers humbly far away 
from the academic or educational religion. 
Textbooks, conveying formal poetic informa- 
tion, offering best and most incontrovertible 
of studious reasons for the why and how of 
poetry reading, are thicker than flowers in 
May or sad hearts in war time, but here is 
no hint of addition to their number. 

The best argument that can be advanced 
in favor of marriage is that marriage has 
been found happy. The best of all reasons 
for reading poetry is because one loves it. 
And the best way to read poetry is with the 
love that, for love's sake, finds its own path- 
way, works its own miracles of sympathy and 
understanding. 

The simple intent, therefore, of "How to 
Read Poetry" is to assist the lay poetry 
lover — far more numerous and universal 



Foreword 



than might be imagined — to comprehend 
and, if necessary, defend his affection; to 
remove the curse too widely laid by scholastic 
injunctions and " required reading;" to per- 
suade the non-poetic reader who, for what- 
ever reason, believes that he does not like 
poetry that at heart he really does. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I Why Read Poetry? 3 

II What Do We Seek in Poetry? . . . 18 

III The "Old" Poetry, So-Called ... 37 

IV The "New "Poetry, So-Called . . . 61 
V Formal Poetry: the Sonnet, the Ode, 

the Elegy, and Blank Verse . . .113 
VI Narrative, Dramatic and Descriptive 

Poetry 149 

VII The Case for the Defense 176 

INTERPOLATED POEMS 



I Remember, I Remember 

Thomas Hood ... 1 

Invictus William Ernest Henley 17 

The Toys .... Coventry Patmore . 35 
The Cornucopia of Red and Green Comfits 

Amy Lowell ... 53 
The Soldier . . . Rupert Brooke . . .111 
Spring Night . . . Sara Teasdale . . .147 
In Flanders' Fields . John McCrae . . .175 
The Happiest Heart . John Vance Cheney . 180 



HOW TO READ 
POETRY 



I REMEMBER, I REMEMBER 

I remember, I remember 

The house where I was born, 
The little window where the sun 

Came peeping in at morn; 
It never came a wink too soon, 

Nor brought too long a day; 
But now I often wish the night 

Had borne my breath away. 

I remember, I remember, 

The roses red and white, 
The violets and the lily-cups, 

Those flowers made of light! 
The lilacs where the robins built, 

And where my brother set 
The laburnum on his birthday, — 

The tree is living yet ! 



How to Read Poetry 



I remember, I remember, 

Where I was used to swing, 
And thought the air must rush as fresh 

To swallows on the wing; 
My spirit flew in feathers then 

That is so heavy now, 
The summer pool could hardly cool 

The fever on my brow. 

I remember, I remember, 

The fir trees dark and high, 
I used to think their slender spires 

Were close against the sky : 
It was a childish ignorance, 

But now 'tis little joy 
To know I'm farther off from Heaven 

Than when I was a boy. 

— Thomas Hood. 



CHAPTER I 

WHY READ POETRY? 

WHY read poetry? Because you love it. 
Because every human being, at some 
time, in some form, under some conditions, 
feels and rejoices in the poetic impulse. 

Why? Ask some mighty oracle, some 
omniscient authority. We are dealing with 
effects, not causes, with undying and world- 
wide facts. 

Proof? Of the simplest. The lyric love, 
the lyric voice, was born with humanity. It 
has persisted and proclaimed in all ages. 
Never a tribe, a race, a nation but has had its 
own special, individual poets and songs. 

To pass to concrete examples, the child 
who cared nothing for Mother Goose rhymes 
would — should — be accorded immediate 
medical attention ; the little girl who crooned 
not to her dolls, the little boy who never gave 
vent to more or less melodious notes and 
cries and calls would be unthinkable. The 

3 



How to Read Poetry 



college youth, the man of affairs, punctuates 
his enthusiasms by rhythmic, frequently rhym- 
ing " yells " and " slogans," the old folk com- 
fort lonely or stimulate dreamy age by re- 
calling half-forgotten songs and ballads and 
chanteys. For yourself , good sir or madam — 

Which do you remember best and most 
easily, the prose proverb or the poetic ad- 
monition, the uncadenced " ad." or the ca- 
denced appeal of the " Spotless Town" jin- 
gles and kindred? For specific illustration: 

American cities, some years ago, were 
flooded by advertisements of a rubberized ar- 
ticle whose virtues were acclaimed somewhat 
after this manner: 

Washable, dryable, 
Durable, pliable ; 
Pardon the English, but 
Isn't it tryable ? 

Few now, perhaps, could give, offhand, the 
name or nature of the advertised commodity. 
All memory of the article advertised, all faint- 
est recollection of its maker and character 
may have been swept from the casual mind 



Why Read Poetry? 



by the obliterating waves of busy living, but 
— the jingle lingers. 

And proves a point that in many ways, nat- 
ural and scientific, may be firmly pressed 
home. 

Hickory, dickory dock, 

The mouse ran up the clock, 

The clock struck one, the mouse ran down, 

Hickory, dickory dock! 

How many millions of delighted young- 
sters have been saddled for life with the bur- 
den of this simple ditty who, two seconds 
after hearing the unadorned statement that 
"The mouse ran up the clock and down 
again," would have forgotten all about it? 
How many millions have preserved through 
life conscious or subconscious recollection of 
the not entirely dissimilar legend concerning 
the unknown "King of France" who, "with 
all his thousand men," performed not entirely 
dissimilar evolutions in regard to the "hill" 
and the " swords " so fruitlessly ascended and 
drawn? 

What makes the jingles so long, so irresist- 



How to Read Poetry 



ibly, remembered? The rhythm, good 
friends, the rhythm! 

Pursue the thought a little further. 
Doesn't expression count for almost as much 
as material, manner weigh almost as heavily 
as matter, with most of us? Be outspoken, 
be honest ! Doesn't it sometimes mean more ? 
At all events, and duly observing all conserva- 
tive proprieties, the way in which a given 
thing is said surely matters much, at least in 
the way of resultant impression. 

Lovelace, " going to the wars " and inform- 
ing his fair lady that " Because I am honor- 
able, dear, I am able to love you so much," 
would have affected an utterance to which, 
in all probability, even the cherished Lucasta 
would have paid little attention. 

I could not love thee, Dear, so much 
Loved I not Honor more, 

made the sentiment unforgettable and Love- 
lace famous. The beauty of the thought is 
enriched by beauty of setting, the charm of 
verbal music fixes the idea that, less impres- 
sively presented, soon would be swept away. 



Why Read Poetry? 



Why, to impale this thought irretrievably, 
do we remember " Mandalay " so easily, long 
and lovingly? Because of the swelling swing 
and sway that frame, to indulge in excusable 
mixing of metaphors, the vivid picture. 

" Poetry," it has been well said, " is emo- 
tion recollected in tranquillity." But poetry 
also is emotion recollected — and reflected — 
in and by the lilt and swell of song. 

Here, then, are two basic and admirable 
reasons for reading poetry. Poetry, nay, 
even " verse and worse " as Lamb had it, may 
make eternal beauty that might otherwise be 
evanescent, may help, cause, compel us to pre- 
serve "beyond chance of change" joys that 
are in themselves of fleeting order. 

But poetry does more. It quickens and in- 
spires the sense of beauty, surely never more 
needed than at present. We may not all 
write poetry (though almost everybody does, 
nowadays, and though certain happy poets 
believe that children should be taught poetic 
forms, as the elements of music, with creative 
possibilities under prospective consideration) , 
but we can all read it. And in the reading of 



8 How to Read Poetry 

poetry, like virtue "its own exceeding rich 
reward," we can enjoy all manner of delight- 
ful thrills and impulses and vicarious senti- 
ments and emotions even more easily than at 
the " movies." The joy of reading poetry, as 
practical, legitimate and reasonable as that 
of the stage or painting, consists largely in the 
increased power of making or realizing — 
visualizing — mental pictures. 

" My mind to me a kingdom is," "I wan- 
dered lonely as a cloud," " Over the hills and 
far away," "The groves were God's first 
temples," what hosts of lovely images rise in 
response to these and other beautiful phrases ! 
What vivid, varied, glorious "phantoms of 
delight" are evoked by repetition, recollec- 
tion of countless well-loved stanzas, poems, 
lines ! 

"We can hear without emotion of a child 
slain in war so long as we merely understand 
the fact without imagining," says Brian 
Hooker, himself a true and delicate poet, dis- 
cussing "The Practical Use of Poetry;" 
"but the moment we imagine such a thing, 
we begin to feel Poetry is 



Why Read Poetry? 



not alone our common repository of past 
experience, but to a degree far greater 
than we realize our source of present action. 
. . . . The facts of life change and 
falsify and pass utterly away, but the truth 
is poetry and shall prevail." 

Because our feelings, and manner of feel- 
ing, yes, even in war time, are as prone to be- 
come standardized, to get into ruts, as our 
physical habits, anything that aids, induces 
feeling of right, of keen, of uplifting order 
is of truest value to mankind. 

Who, for commonplace, realistic example, 
has not redeemed, transfigured a dripping day 
through thought or repetition of some poem 
by magic of words transmuting the gloom into 
beauty? Dripping days recurring frequently 
in the lives of most humans, such poems are 
many and varied. Of the popular order most 
fitting in present connection, Riley's "Why, 
rain's my choice" and Loveman's "It 
isn't raining rain to me" spring to mind 
most readily. Equally inspiring, if less 
famous, is Mabel Earle's lovable " Rainy 
Days." 



io How to Read Poetry ' 

Dear Lord, shall I remember up in 
Heaven 
How all the world grows sweet when 
leaves are wet, 
How the warm summer rain is dashed 
and driven 
Across my beds of fern and migno- 
nette ? 
Shall I remember there, when angels 
wander 
Shining, across Thy fields and singing 
still, 
How the wind sways the willow branches 
yonder, 
And the rain murmurs over field and 
hill? 

Shall I remember there, in Heaven, be- 
holding 
The light that rises not, nor sets, nor 
pales, 
How all this day the mists are folding, 
folding, 
Saintly and white, along the silent 
vales? 



Why Read Poetry? 1 1 

When all the Heavenly courts are 
hushed and holy 
With Thy deep peace, that stills the 
sound of praise, 
Will it be like the benediction lowly 
Breathed in the blessedness of rainy 
days? 

Isn't anything worth while that puts such 
glory into nature for those who, so unchal- 
lenged, scarce might note the gray wonder, 
the soft, dim loveliness of wet weather? 
Edith Franklin Wyatt, in " City Whistles." 
"City Vespers," "A City Swallow," and 
11 November in the City," performs a kindred 
miracle in behalf of the busy townsmen to 
whom thronging streets and metropolitan 
bustle too often suggest only the harder and 
harsher aspects of trade and barter, her in- 
spiring contemporary note but echoing those 
of many other city singers and purveyors of 
poetic magic. Hood, Wordsworth, Towne, 
Kilmer, Howells, it were vain to dream of 
enumerating those who have thus provided 
sight for the poetically blind. 



12 How to Read Poetry 

Poems about roads, the sea, the fields, the 
forest, the desert, the prairies, the mountains 
are many and beloved as humanity's passion 
for travel, as the wanderlust that redeems 
from cloddish inertia countless comfort- 
clogged children of modernity. The mighty 
underlying impulses of love, death, sin, and 
sorrow are interpreted, softened, hallowed, 
by unnumbered and many-veined poems and 
lyrics, the persistent if sometimes belittled 
appeal of Tennyson or Longfellow or Whit- 
tier or Wordsworth lies in their power of 
evoking sympathetic feeling, of visioning 
vivid pictures, of turning to black and gold 
and rainbow colorings the universal life fig- 
ments and pigments more commonly pre- 
sented as dingy, dreary, drab. 

Poetry, moreover, not only makes us feel, 
but makes us feel in universal mariner. " The 
Colonel's lady and Julia O'Grady are sisters 
under their skins " is Kipling's way of express- 
ing a truth we must all realize upon occasion. 
Needless to say the Colonel himself and 
Julia's husband are of equally intrinsic kin- 
ship. Poetry, wide as the world, flexible as 



Why Read Poetry? 13 

the winds, fluid as water, not only expresses 
but interprets for the inarticulate the great 
general human emotions. It says for us 
things that few of us can say for ourselves, 
that, in naked prose, few of us would say 
were the saying conventionally possible. It 
endows the emotionally dumb with vicarious 
eloquence, it lends to the unlettered the gift 
of strange tongues. 

Through the medium of poetry the voice- 
less, whose most fervent moods and emotions 
must remain personally unexpressed, who 
perhaps never have been blessed with fervent 
moods and emotions, may rejoice in the sim- 
ple sweetness of "Annie Laurie," the kindly 
power of all old and new heroes, the splendid 
pride and prowess of all those through all 
the ages celebrated in enshrining song. 

The childless, the bereaved woman may 
live through experiences never directly her 
own in the lullabies and child poems quick 
with the sacred mother impulse; the desolate 
may find the lost grace of gladness, the sus- 
tenance of faith in lyrics hymning the joyous 
hope of others. 



14 How to Read Poetry 

The lame, the halt, the blind may know the 
bliss of open space, wide skies, free motion. 
The prisoned may delight in sea and land and 
mountains. Even the soldier heart shut in the 
inadequate body may share the thrills of the 
fighter. The aged may be youthful, the timid 
may be brave. 

All this through prose too? Yes, but in 
lessened, inferior measure. "Friendship," 
runs the wise French proverb, " is love with- 
out wings." Just so, prose sentiment too 
often is wingless. Poetry is capable of won- 
drous flights, usually, even when of uninspired 
variety, can fly a little, at least can sug- 
gest the illusion of leaving prosaic earth be- 
hind. 

That's why we all love it — for surely, 
now, you willingly admit the prevailing love 
and need of poetry. From the minstrels of 
earliest antiquity down to the newest of " new 
poetry" singers, the poet's public always has 
been more or less assured him, though not al- 
ways during his lifetime. Successful maga- 
zine editors are quite cognizant of the gen- 
eral fondness for poetry. Magazine verses 



Why Read Poetry? 15 

are not printed to solve the "filler" problem 
alone. 

And that's why — because we all love 
poetry — that all of us read poetry upon 
occasion and should read it. That's why the 
classic poets never go out of fashion, why new 
ones come into fashion continually. Pass- 
ing by all the stock (and standard) argu- 
ments for reading poetry because of its good 
effect upon prose writing, for its cultural 
value or other educational, bread and butter 
reasons we read poetry — yes, all of us at one 
time or another! — because we love it — un- 
less, indeed, something is wrong with our lov- 
ing apparatus. 

We may not, of course, all love the same 
kinds of poetry; to do so would be as regret- 
table as for all to love the same kinds of food 
or friends. But if we don't love some kind of 
poetry it's because we're not normal or be- 
cause we're not reading or choosing aright. 



INVICTUS 

Out of the night that covers me, 
Black as the pit from pole to pole, 

I thank whatever gods may be 
For my unconquerable soul. 

In the fell clutch of circumstance 
I have not winced nor cried aloud. 

Under the bludgeonings of chance 
My head is bloody, but unbowed. 

Beyond this place of wrath and tears 
Looms but the Horror of the shade, 

And yet the menace of the years 
Finds and shall find me unafraid. 

It matters not how strait the gate, 
How charged with punishments the 
scroll, 
I am the master of my fate: 
I am the captain of my soul. 

— William Ernest Henley. 
17 



CHAPTER II 

WHAT DO WE SEEK IN POETRY? 

ENJOYMENT, of course. (Was it not 
agreed in the beginning that only the 
" happy reasons" for reading poetry should 
be considered? Let those who will read 
poetry for purposes of education or culture 
or conversational utility. We are concerned 
alone with poetry reading for the sake of 
fun. ) 

Enjoyment, then, is our object in poetry, 
albeit, as J. B. Kerfoot sagely says, " One can 
learn more about poetry from watching its 
squirms than from all the pronouncements of 
all the pundits." And — let it be said quickly, 
before countless puzzled or dissentient voices 
deafen with question or denial — enjoyment 
in the reading of poetry is possible to every 
man, woman, and child in existence. Not, 
of course, as previously suggested, the same 
kind of enjoyment, nor, for that matter, the 
same kind of poetry. Far from it. Enjoy- 

18 



What Do We Seek in Poetry? 19 

ment as dissimilar, as diverse, as infinitely 
varied as human nature or as poetry itself. 

One of the most potent causes of the long 
supposed unpopularity of poetry lies in the 
fact that poetry almost universally is read and 
studied with so little discrimination, such 
careless selection, such slight attention to per- 
sonal tendencies and taste. Another lies in 
the fancy, frequent as absurd, that "good" 
poetry, of whatever nature, must prove 
equally pleasing to all tasteful readers, 
whereas, human nature being cast into an in- 
finite variety of shapes and patterns, the ex- 
act reverse is — and should be — true. 

There are as many good kinds of poetry — 
or kinds of good poetry — as there are of 
good music or good pictures. The lilting 
ballad may be as fine in its way as a Beethoven 
sonata ; the simplest of lyrics in its own field 
may rank as high as, in another, Dante's 
"Inferno" or " Paradise Lost." 

Who would condemn a beautiful land- 
scape, an entertaining cartoon, because it was 
neither a portrait nor a still-life study? 
Where would be the sense of condemning art 



20 How to Read Poetry 

or the art lover because a certain style of 
painting made no appeal to a single observer, 
of deprecating all dramatic productions be- 
cause comedy — or tragedy — failed of per- 
sonal charm or application? Yet such prac- 
tice would be quite as sensible as to decide that 
one did not like or enjoy poetry because cer- 
tain varieties lacked the power to hold or 
please. 

Frost's grave stories, Lindsay's spirited 
trumpet-tones, Harriet Monroe's polished 
and tender thoughtfulness, Sara Teasdale's 
poignant purity of mood and meter all, to 
point the moral by present favorites, are ex- 
cellent, each in its own manner, but their vir- 
tue, by reason of their very individuality, is 
by no means identical or synchronous. Dif- 
ferent kinds of poetry, as different poets, suit 
differing temperaments, mentalities, times of 
life, or the day. 

Poetry, then, should be read, selected, fitted 
to the person and mood as reasonably as 
books or clothes or games or articles of diet. 
The eager prospective bridegroom might not, 
for the moment, find Bryant's " Thanatopsis " 



What Do We Seek in Poetry? 21 

or Scott's " Lady of the Lake " absorbing, but 
Christopher Morley's " Songs for a Little 
House," while of lesser abstract value, might 
prove quick with fascination. Because a 
piquant anecdote about the last-named collec- 
tion of verse suits so aptly it shall be quoted 
here. 

"I don't suppose you care for poetry," a 
Morley admirer is reported as remarking to 
a man who had always believed in the verac- 
ity of the suggestion, "but," receiving the 
expected negative, "you live in a little house, 
doubtless you are fond of your wife, you 
have chairs, a table, and, in all probability^ 
a cat. I believe you are the proud father of a 
son, and it is likely that you sometimes stoke 
the furnace. Now just let me read you a bit 
of this." 

A That's not poetry," the unconscious con- 
vert exclaimed, presently, "that's just read- 
ing" — which assertion, incidentally, has been 
made against Masters, Milton, and many an- 
other poet "old" and "new." 

So, too, with the man who in time of peace 
cared little for war poetry, but who now, with 



22 How to Read Poetry 

all the world thrilling to the war-call, reads all 
the war poetry he encounters. So, again, with 
the woman who, from the widened viewpoint 
of happy or bereaved mother, suddenly finds 
lullabies and poems of childhood irresistible. 
So, yet again, with the adolescent youth or 
maiden one day considering love poems " silly 
rot" the next day devouring them avidly, if 
in secret. Who — but why continue? Com- 
plete the argument by recalling the kind of 
poems, verses, jingles you clipped and tucked 
away in pocketbook or bureau drawer between 
your fifteenth and twentieth birthdays, by con- 
sidering the kind of poetry you clip and tuck 
away (for everyone does it sometimes) now- 
adays. 

The finest of skating songs would have but 
slight appeal in a northern blizzard, but who, 
in such circumstance, could resist a June 
poem? Think, for a moment, and for exam 
pie, upon Richard Henry Stoddard's "The 
Flight of Youth." 

There are gains for all our losses, 
There are balms for all our pain, 



What Do We Seek in Poetry? 23 

But when youth, the dream, departs, 
It takes something from our hearts, 
And it never comes again. 

We are stronger, and are better 

Under manhood's sterner reign, 
Still, we feel that something fleet 
Followed youth with flying feet, 
And will never come again. 

.Something beautiful has vanished 

And we sigh for it in vain. 
We behold it everywhere, 
In the earth and in the air, 

But it never comes again. 

Now, if you are on the hither side of forty 
those haunting lines probably appear to you 
as only academically graceful and tender. 
Perhaps, even, the thought embodied seems 
rather like sentimental if not stupid nonsense. 
But if you are on the other side of forty, or 
if, for any reason, the flight of time has been 
pressed home to you, the almost inevitable 
reaction will be that of keen appreciation, 



24 How to Read Poetry 



touched with quick resentment or gently re- 
sponsive sadness. If the " arid tableland of 
middle life" looms vaguely near, or if it lies 
so far behind as to have lost all sting and 
sadness, quite another kind of enjoyment, that 
of satisfied recognition, will follow the read- 
ing. At all events, it is evident that spon- 
taneous, superlative emotional pleasure scarce 
could follow successive reading of the 
quoted poem and of, for instance, Anne Hig- 
ginson Spicer's "Song of an April Fool." 

Across the fields I laugh and run. 
I toss my heart up to the sun 
And catch it back in my two hands. 
All girdled round with golden bands 
It is, and chains of sunny beams 
That glitter like my childish dreams. 

And if the day is filled with mist, 
What care have I ? Where-e'er I list 
I run and breathe soft depths of dew, 
And feel the soft damp soak me through 
Until my heart swells like a seed 
And bursts to very bloom, indeed. 



What Do We Seek in Poetry? 25 

There may be those who keep a state 

Of dignity, and walk sedate, 

Who do not laugh, and do not care 

To meet Young April debonair 

And smiling, like some shepherd swain 

Who greets his love, or sun or rain. 

Poor fools, I'll let them go their way 
Unmindful of the April day. 
There must be something that they prize 
More than these rainbow April skies. 
They shall not daunt me as I run 
And toss my heart up to the sun. 

Nor could the mood sympathetic to this 
bit of nature-love incarnate, to Browning's 
"Pippa Passes," to Masefield's sea poems 
prove equally sympathetic to many another 
and equally depictive poem of nature. Take, 
for example, Sidney Lanier's " Ballad of 
Trees and the Master" and Joyce Kilmer's 
" Trees." Here are two lovely poems, each 
written in praise of trees, each instinct with 
deep and simply expressed feeling, each in- 
trinsically reverent in tone and expression, 



26 How to Read Poetry 

yet what leagues, what eternities apart in the 
essential verities that distinguish, differentiate 
them! Lanier is most concerned with the 
Master, Kilmer with the trees, and this di- 
vergence of creative mood must arouse 
equally marked divergence of sympathy and 
comprehension on the part of the reader. 
Lanier is the greater poet, doubtless, but is 
there not something even more widely appeal- 
ing, because more widely human, about the 
simple Kilmer lines: 

I think that I shall never see 
A poem lovely as a tree. 

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest 
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast; 

A tree that looks at God all day, 
And lifts her leafy arms to pray; 

A tree that may in Summer wear 
A nest of robins in her hair; 

Upon whose bosom snow has lain; 
Who intimately lives with rain. 



What Do We Seek in Poetry? 27 

Poems are made by fools like me, 
But only God can make a tree. 

Poems of trees and woods are almost as 
numerous, as beloved as poems of the road 
and the joys of travel, and for the simplest, 
most understandable of reasons. Woods and 
trees and roads bulk large in the life, at least 
in the imaginative enjoyment, of almost every 
human being. But poems of woods and trees 
and roads must be vastly varied if they are 
to range widest popular scope. So, too, 
moreover, with all the unending poetic vari- 
ants upon the best loved human themes. 

Courage, to illustrate, is a virtue that all 
men, all women, agree to admire, exalt. 
Herein lies the spell of certain much quoted 
poems. It has been related that upon canvass 
of a large and fairly representative gathering 
of men Henley's intrepid "Invictus" was 
drawn from several hundred pockets or hon- 
ored by several hundred mouths as the favor- 
ite poem of each person voting. These men 
loved "Invictus" because it expressed a 
thought, a theory, an attitude they had long 



2$ How to Read Poetry 

and deeply adored in less articulate man- 
ner. Many women might like the idea with- 
out caring for the form of the Henley chal- 
lenge. Few brave, experienced women, per- 
haps, could resist the subtle charm of Mar- 
garet Widdemer's "A Cyprian Woman." 

Under dusky laurel leaf, 

Scarlet leaf of rose, 
I lie prone, who have known 

All a woman knows — 

Love and grief and motherhood, 
Fame and mirth and scorn; 

These are all shall befall 
Any woman born. 

Jewel-laden are my hands, 

Tall my stone above; 
Do not weep that I sleep 

Who was wise in love ; 

Where I walk a shadow gray 

Through gray asphodel, 
I am glad, who have had 

All that Life could tell. 



What Do We Seek in Poetry? 29 

Because few women, however brave, how- 
ever experienced, have known " all a woman 
knows" the underlying, delicately suggested 
sense of adventure, the hint of poignant pain 
and passion incident to this " second epitaph 
for Bilitis " will leave many a staid feminine 
reader glad or gasping. Masculine readers, 
on the other hand, may find it dull or repel- 
lent, might unhesitatingly declare against 
more than surface virtue or beauty in the 
poem's connection. Other, deeper poems re- 
lating to death might affect them far more 
strongly. Yet the appeal, the message of Sir 
Edwin Arnold's "He who died at Azan 
sends," Wordsworth's "Our life is but a 
sleep and a forgetting," and Alan Seeger's " I 
Have a Rendezvous with Death" might not 
be at all synonymous. Matthew Arnold's 
classic " Strew on her roses, roses " has quick- 
ened to delicious thrilling many whom the fol- 
lowing sister-lyric might leave unstirred and 
cold. 

Here she lies where all must come, 
After the days grow wearisome, 
She that was Chrysanthemum. 



30 How to Read Poetry 

Tulips falter in the wind; 
With blown leaves her eyes are blind, 
And her singing mouth is dumb. 
Here she lies where all must come. 

Lotus flower between her breasts 
Rests as deeply as she rests ; 
Milky veil about her rolled 
Feels seeds quicken in its fold: — 
Here she lies where all must come. 

Little feet that danced so light 
Music shall not stir tonight, 
Though the strongest love of men 
Lilted on the samisen. 
Little hands men's hearts that led 
Into snares that she had spread 
After days grown wearisome — 

Little hands shall know no more 
Closing door or opening door, 
Keys of sorrow or of grief; 
Lo ! they hold a withered leaf. 
World, and where is thy distress? 
One chrysanthemum the less ! 



What Do We Seek in Poetry? 31 

World, what say'st thou? She is dumb, 
She that was Chrysanthemum. 

So, again, in regard to any or all of the 
countless tastes, devotions, idiosyncrasies, en- 
thusiasms variously delighting the children of 
men. Poetry there is for the pleasing of all, 
poetry capable of infinite variety of selection. 
Art lovers, for example, to the end of time 
will swear by the Kenyon Cox creed begin- 
ning "Work thou for pleasure," or that 
charming figuration of Edith M. Thomas, 
11 Of old the muses sat on high— " 

Lovers and friends of humanity's " little 
brethren," dogs and cats, will never tire of 
songs and sonnets that celebrate the goodness 
and graces of these faithful or faithless dwell- 
ers by the hearthstone or doorstep. 

The religiously inclined — and who, at 
heart, in secret, does not incline toward some 
kind or form of religion? — will ever find in 
religious poetry recurrent joy and strength 
and solace. To the religious, as the loving, 
the poems of Christina Rossetti always have 
meant a very special delectation, as have the 



32 How to Read Poetry 

poems of Francis Thompson, Alice Meynell, 
and other religious singers. And so the tale 
goes on. 

Down — or up — or around — the entire 
list or gamut of human experience the poetry- 
pleasure trail might be followed, but sufficient 
illustrations have been provided for the satis- 
faction of any open-minded, unprejudiced 
reader. Any such who have followed the 
thought-thread of the outlined thesis will be 
ready to admit universal enjoyment of poetry, 
pleasure in poetry reading — always, be it 
again understood, if matter be properly suited 
to mood, material to situation. Dickens for- 
mulated the facts in regard to poetry reading 
when he caused R. Wilfer to excuse or ex- 
plain his tragic wife to their daughter. 

" Supposing .... that a man wanted 
to be always marching, he would find your 
mother an inestimable companion. But if he 
had any taste for walking, or should wish at 
any time to break into a trot, he might some- 
times find it difficult to keep step with your 
mother. Or take it this way, Bella, 
. . . . supposing that a man had to go 



What Do We Seek in Poetry? 33 

through life, we won't say with a companion, 
but we'll say to a tune. Very good. Suppos- 
ing that the tune allotted to him was the ' Dead 
March ' in * Saul.' Well. It would be a very 
suitable tune for particular occasions — none 
better — but it would be difficult to keep time 
with in the ordinary run of domestic transac- 
tions. For instance, if he took his supper after 
a hard day, to the 'Dead March' in 'Saul/ 
his food might be likely to set heavy on him. 
Or, if he was at any time inclined to relieve 
his mind by singing a comic song or dancing a 
hornpipe, and was obliged to do it to the 
1 Dead March ' in l Saul,' he might find himself 
put out in the execution of his lively intentions." 

Exactly. It need not be said again that 
herein lies the secret of reading poetry with 
enjoyment: suit the poetry to the needs and 
uses of the time. 

Is your mood solemn? Don't read trip- 
ping ballads, sentimental triolets, gay vers de 
societe, stirring war songs or even Edmund 
Vance Cooke's bracing " Impertinent Poems." 

Are you in love ? Peruse all the love lyrics 
and epithalamiums available, but seek not to 



34 How to Read Poetry 

stay your soul with the biting sarcasm of Mas- 
ters or the bludgeon strokes of Sandburg. 
As well, when hungry, regale one's self with 
whipped cream or, when throbbing with the 
joy of life, curb your steps to some stately 
chant or dirge. 

Read poetry, in a word, as sensibly, hon- 
estly, as you eat or drink or dress or dream or 
talk or sleep or plan for the future. Then 
there'll be no more nonsense about not enjoy- 
ing poetry. 

For whoso reads poetry in accordance 
with these suggestions no more could avert 
resultant enjoyment than he could leap into 
the air and fly. 



THE TOYS 

My little Son, who looked from thought- 
ful eyes 

And moved and spoke in quiet grown-up 
wise, 

Having my law the seventh time diso- 
beyed, 

I struck him, and dismissed 

With hard words and unkissed, 

— His Mother, who was patient, being 
dead. 

Then, fearing lest his grief should hin- 
der sleep, 

I visited his bed, 

But found him slumbering deep, 

With darkened eyelids, and their lashes 
yet 

From his late sobbing wet. 

And I, with moan, 

Kissing away his tears, left others of my 
own; 

For, on a table drawn beside his head, 

35 



36 How to Read Poetry 

He had put, within his reach, 

A box of counters and a red-veined stone, 

A piece of glass abraded by the beach, 

And six or seven shells, 

A bottle with bluebells, 

And two French copper coins, ranged 

there with careful art, 
To comfort his sad heart. 
So when that night I prayed 
To God, I wept, and said: 
Ah, when at last we lie with tranced 

breath, 
Not vexing Thee in death, 
And thou rememberest of what toys 
We made our joys, 
How weakly understood 
Thy great commanded good, 
Then, fatherly not less 
Than I whom Thou has molded from 

the clay, 
Thou'lt leave Thy wrath, and say, 
" I will be sorry for their childishness." 
— Coventry Patmore. 



CHAPTER III 

THE "OLD" POETRY, SO-CALLED 

THE term "old" poetry is here used, 
purely as a convenience, because of the 
recent popular division of poetry into the sup- 
posedly " old " and " new " varieties. But to 
speak of "old" poetry in reality is as absurd 
as it would be to speak, in the same sense, of 
"old" sky or "old" sea or "old" sunshine 
or any other general and universal character- 
istic or quality of creation. For the poetry 
now known as "old" is as ageless, deathless, 
perpetual, and eternal as any of the powers 
of nature noted. It began with the earli- 
est dawns and stirrings of humanity; it 
w T ill persist, endure, as long as the human 
race. 

Even Miss Amy Lowell, avowed and ac- 
credited apostle of the "new" school of 
poetry, in "Tendencies in Modern Ameri- 
can Poetry" admits that "Good poetry, if 
not strikingly great poetry, marked the epoch 

37 



38 How to Read Poetry 

of Whittier, Bryant, Emerson, Longfellow, 
and Holmes." 

" The fundamentals of poetry," as William 
Stanley Braithwaite aptly says, "are in the 
folk chants of antiquity and the communal 
chant of primitive peoples in the world today. 
. . . . Poetry has advanced from the 
oral communal chant to a highly developed 
organism in which formal diction and forms 
of fixed patterns are more or less standard- 
ized." And it has advanced, in the English 
poetic history which, at least until quite re- 
cently, includes American poetic history, by 
a progression distinctly orderly if not always 
regular or measured. 

From the earliest known English poems 
such as "Sumer is icumen in," up through 
the ballads, chants, and story-songs of the 
wandering minstrels, up through Chaucer, 
Hogg, Percy, the medieval, Elizabethan, 
Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian poets to 
the variously flowering and flourishing poets 
of the twentieth century, the stream of Eng- 
lish-couched poetry has steadily flowed and 
risen. A similar course and progression 



The " Old" Poetry, So-Called 39 

has marked the poetry tide of other lands and 
races. And poetry, in all known ages and 
stages of the world's progress, has followed, 
reflected, sometimes foretold and forestalled 
the changing course of humanity's life, experi- 
ence, and thought. 

When the world has been gay with roman- 
ticism, quick with chivalry, overcharged with 
sentiment, stirred by martial spirit, filled with 
religious enthusiasm, disturbed by social 
growing pains, poetry, faithful handmaid of 
life, has ever been true to the growing aims 
and ideals of her mistress. " For poetry," 
well says Louis Untermeyer, himself a rare 
and forceful poet, " is something more than 
a graceful, literary escape from life" (al- 
though, it may be interpolated, many a tired 
human heart and soul has found " surcease 
from care" in the poems of Longfellow or 
other gentle singers, fresh courage and stimu- 
lus and a bracing " way out " through the help 
of more daring bards, poetry, like religion, 
ministering, always, to deepest human need) . 
11 It is a spirited encounter with it." 

"A spirited sharing in life's encounter'' 



4-0 How to Read Poetry 

might, perhaps, come a shade nearer the 
truth. 

This it was that rendered the early Chris- 
tian centuries so rich in religious poetry, that 
brought forth the tender love lyrics of the 
court singers, the nature worshiping of the 
Lake Poets, the pure philosophizing of 
Bryant and Whittier and Emerson; this it is 
that now calls to war poems and chivalric out- 
pourings, to surging acknowledgment of di- 
vinity, the poets of the moment, that has 
tuned so much recent and contemporary sing- 
ing to the larger themes of the human race. 

" There are just two great levelers in the 
world — poetry and death," is the dictum of 
William Stanley Braithwaite, who might 
have added love to their number. The co- 
universal nature of the two — or three — ac- 
counts for the fact of poetry's early beginning 
and the concomitant fact that it will endure 
as long as time. 

Poetry, moreover, began — and will per- 
sist — with form if not formality. The poets 
of child races lacked the finished form of 
their descendants, lineal and poetic, just as the 



The " Old" Poetry, So-Called 41 

child poet of today frequently lacks the fin- 
ished grace of his later production. But the 
poetic child, racial or individual, always ex- 
presses, consciously or otherwise, a striving 
toward form, especially in its simplest rhym- 
ing and rhythmic developments, a striving, be 
it said, frequently most powerful and moving. 
Pope by no means represents the sole singer 
who " lisped in numbers, for the numbers 
came." 

" Milton," according to Arthur Davison 
Ficke, "knew what all poets will be wise to 
recognize today; that certain effects in poetry 
are wholly impossible without the use of regu- 
lar rhythms and rhymes." 

' The reason for this fact," Mr. Ficke ex- 
plains, " is derived from the very nature of 
the art. It is based on the absolute necessity 
of carrying the lulled spirit of the reader on 
waves of recurrent sound into a state of sus- 
pended consciousness — a kind of visionary 
trance in which the mind, deaf for a moment 
to the distractions of the world around it, will 
see singly and solely the dream which the poet 
puts before it. The emotion-heightening, 



42 How to Read Poetry 

hypnotic power of regular rhythms and recur- 
rent rhymes is in many instances the whole 
basis of that peculiar somnambulistic effect 
which is the special magic of poetry. Emo- 
tion is the secret of it all; and some emotions 
answer to the call of rhyme and rhythm as to 
almost nothing else. Rhyme seizes the thread 
of one's thoughts as might a current, and in- 
tertwines with it, and draws it down into re- 
mote subterranean caverns of the spirit, un- 
visited by the everyday consciousness. . . . 

11 When the mind is a blaze of sudden reve- 
lation, and the poet's theme glows into thor- 
ough transparency of white heat, he will usu- 
ally find that what he has to say flows rapidly 
and perfectly into the smooth mold of regu- 
lar verse-forms." 

This statement, of keen interest in connec- 
tion with certain fascinating poetic phenomena 
— Lowell's "The Vision of Sir Launfal," it 
will be remembered, was composed and fin- 
ished in a day — also has its value as suc- 
cinctly controverting the claim so frequently 
and vociferously made of late to the effect 
that too meticulous devotion to form limits 



The "Old" Poetry, So-Called 43 

freedom of expression, sometimes actually 
maims the subject matter so treated. Imper- 
fectly mastered technique must always, of 
course, destroy grace if not power of expres- 
sion, but the indicated claim, indirectly re- 
sponsible, because of sundry ridiculous and 
futile free verse monstrosities produced 
under its spell, for much injury to its special 
and cherished thesis, is not substantiated by 
study, nor will it bear close analysis. 

As well declare that because a volume of 
air or water is too mighty for a pint pitcher 
or safely to sail a tiny boat no other vessel 
or craft may contain or use it, as to say that 
because a poetic thought or mood over-runs 
the triolet form, is too vast and sweeping for 
the ballad, the chante royale, it may not gain 
in effect by transmission through any other 
form of precisely measured expression. The 
Psalms of David, the sweeping roll of Isaiah 
would lose greatly by reduction to a jogging 
meter, gain nothing by the most dignified and 
reverent of rhythmic settings, but they are not 
therefore formless. Free verse enthusiasts 
are the first to proclaim the wide difference 



44 How to Read Poetry 

between vers libre and the majestic biblical 
blank verse. 

In this connection, it will readily be ac- 
cepted that for each and every extant speci- 
men of real poetry remains but one best, in- 
evitable mold. 

Wordsworth's " Ode on the Intimations 
of Immortality," while in thought and trend 
utterly unsuited to the purely lyric form, in- 
dubitably is strengthened in force and appeal 
by the form with which the mind of its crea- 
tor naturally endowed it. Bryant's "Thana- 
topsis," Meredith's "Love in the Valley," 
Scott's " Lady of the Lake " or " Marmion," 
Moore's "Lalla Rookh," Byron's " Childe 
Harold," Noyes' " In Old Japan," Masefield's 
" Dauber," how absurd to deny that these are 
helped rather than hampered by the forms 
that so well fit them. Should momentary con- 
sideration leave slightest doubt of this idea 
change the suggested poems into prose or 
recall some of the terrible distortions into 
which scholastic " practice work" has been 
known to change them. The fact that it is 
as dangerous to meddle with a single line of 



The "Old" Poetry, So-Called 45 

real poetry as with the thought back of it 
proves much in this regard. 

An instructive sidelight may be obtained, 
while on this subject, by perusal of such clever 
parodies as those in which, for example, Car- 
olyn Wells, is wont to indulge. Spring to 
mind, at random, numbers of the representa- 
tive and diabolically ingenious group setting 
forth the "purple cow" motif as various 
great poets might, conceivably, have framed 
it. The mocking, mimicking lines cling to 
mind and memory like limpets, but their mali- 
cious lingering is offset by their irrefutable 
testimony as to the practical infallibility of 
the original expression of any real idea. 

The triolet, as has been suggested, is not as 
a rule suitable to solemn and deep emotions. 
Yet a Chicago poet, not long since, seeking 
poetic outlet for welling sympathy with the 
mother of a youthful war martyr, found her- 
self irresistibly impelled to the triolet man- 
ner. The result was surprisingly good. 

In the main, however, manner must be 
suited to material — which, after all, is but 
the main contention of both "old" and 



46 How to Read Poetry 

"new" poets. One does not feel drawn to 
tripping steps while following a friend to the 
grave, nor incline to stately harmonies for the 
interpreting of a sentimental moment. Con- 
sider, for example, the Tennysonian favorite, 
" Break, Break, Break," that has been loved 
and repeated almost into decay. 

Here we have not only a succession of pic- 
tures — the sea, the ships, the fisherman's 
boy, etc. — but we have also a tenderly wist- 
ful idea and a music of words almost as sweet 
as the Swinburnian phrases that might be — 
and frequently are — read and enjoyed for 
purely melodic reasons. And does not the 
"Break, Break, Break," with its recurrent 
rhythm, harmoniously suggest the splash of 
waves on the shore? 

Reduce this poem to free verse and an 
admirable argument for the classic form 
would be in evidence. Or subject to similar 
injustice the much quoted song of Pippa's 
singing and note the resultant harm: 

God reigns. Everything's all right. 
A sterling sentiment, truly. With fair 



The " Old" Poetry, So-Called 47 

exactitude and adequacy presenting the 
beauty-filled idea of Browning. But 

God's in His Heaven — 

All's right with the world! 

Need more be said? 

New light, again, upon the vexed question 
of " old " and " new " poetry, of form or flex- 
ibility, is shed by the fact that great emotions 
do not, as reasonably might be deduced from 
the frequent assertion that form cramps ex- 
pression, find best general outlet in uncon- 
trolled outpouring. Of the swelling flood of 
real poetry called forth by the Great War, 
comparatively little has conformed to free 
verse standards. There have been many good 
free verse productions, just as in all possible 
human circumstance there will be anarchistic 
productions powerful enough to justify their 
existence, a serious hearing. Amy Lowell's 
'The Cornucopia of Red and Green Com- 
fits," and Louise Driscoll's "The Metal 
Checks" are fine specimens of this order. 
But the majority of the more renowned war 
singers — Brooke, Seeger, Ledwidge, Gib- 



48 How to Read Poetry 

son, etc. — have employed simple rhymes, 
standard meters for the brave and vivid heart 
songs that battle for the right as surely as 
machine guns, "tanks," or cannon. 

The urge and surge of social or socialistic 
sympathies, as social or socialistic antago- 
nisms, more often than not are u put over," 
" gotten across" by aid of the time-honored 
and time-hallowed rhythms, rhymes and 
pulses that have unending if not cumulative 
power to stir human hearts, thrill human 
nerves and souls and senses. Margaret Wid- 
demer's u The Factories," and "The Face of 
Teresina," Florence Wilkinson's "The 
Flower Makers," Ruth Comfort Mitchell's 
"The Night Court," Hood's "The Bridge 
of Sighs," and " The Song of the Shirt," these 
are but a few of the magnificent rhyming ser- 
mons that recur instantly, that, once read, sel- 
dom can be quite forgotten. Would Whit- 
tier's slave poems, or the " Battle Hymn of 
the Republic" be quite so effective without 
their lilt, their pulsing swing? 

Whitman, while scorning mere empty 
rhyme, was so strongly endowed with the 



The "Old" Poetry, So-Called 49 

rhythmic gift that many of his lines affect the 
sensitive like the oncoming roll of thunder 
or the sound of the sea, of a high wind in 
the forest. Masefield, at times, has an ebb 
and flow that brings the ocean tide into the 
narrowest tenement. Kipling's stories in 
rhyme certainly lose nothing through this 
mode of expression. Bret Harte could be 
vigorous enough without sacrificing either 
rhyme or rhythm. Alfred Noyes, like Swin- 
burne, is mainly music, yet, were no clear 
thought to be found beneath their lovely 
singing, who w^ould consent to forego 
" Proserpine " or u The Barrel-organ" for 
this reason? 

Yet never one of these poets, not even 
Whitman at his most Whitmanesque and icon- 
oclastic, would be granted " new poetry M hon- 
ors. The poems of all belong to the field of 
poetry which is neither old nor new because, 
by its very nature and essence, it is of all time. 

The truth is that humanity needs rhyme, 
rhythm, cadence, the recurrent beauty of 
matching lines as it needs every other kind 
of beauty. It needs these, moreover, as best 



$o How to Read Poetry 

and sweetest means of pressing home lessons 
that humanity must learn and that are most 
easily pointed by this method. It needs them, 
no less, to satisfy that hunger for artistic fin- 
ish, perfection which, forsworn or fostered, 
lies deep in every heart. 

Blank verse, stately hexameters, the chis- 
eled sonnet, these phases of the great uni- 
versal gift of poetry we may reserve for our 
greater moments, set aside for special occa- 
sions, but the less majestic features that the 
newer movement would deny us we cannot 
lose without starving. To sing is the first 
human impulse in moments of joy, grief, be- 
reavement, triumph, or disaster; to lift up the 
voice in rhythmic flow is the impulse next to 
come. 

Impressionism, cubism, futurism (each, no 
doubt, with its special message and lesson) 
may pass, but the fundamental love of form 
and color remains untroubled. Music with- 
out harmonic verity, tone, or even "key feel- 
ing" may come and go, but the children of 
men will never lose love or longing for music 
that conforms to sundry basic and unchang- 



The "Old" Poetry, So-Called 51 

ing rules and regulations. So, perhaps, 
most markedly of all, in the realm of poetic 
art. 

" Poetry that is real, that is fit to survive 
through the centuries, needs no defence," well 
says John Curtis Underwood. And poetry 
that, through tender or vigorous reality, has 
proved its fitness by long and strong survival 
stands in no fear, needs no defenders though 
all the hosts of hypothetically "new" poets 
and poetasters are arrayed against it, declare 
its era ended, its glory gone. 

The spell and magic of rhyme, whether in 
the interpenetrative refrain of the folk song 
or ballad, the tintinnabulating reiteration and 
alliteration of Poe, the haunting, quivering, 
pulse-quickening measures of Noyes or the 
plangent, recurrent burden as Vachel Lind- 
say in his " poem games " and folk-built poems 
has relearned and reemployed it, was ever, 
is ever, and ever will be strong to move and 
call us. 

All the wild, strange nations of the world, 
from rim to rim, have had their rhyming, 
rhythmic songs and spells and sagas, their 



52 How to Read Poetry 

runes and muntras and national songs of love, 
occupation, battle. 

To the sway and surge of rhythmic war 
songs and lullabies nation after nation has 
marched and rocked to victory and happi- 
ness, as nation after nation will march and 
rock in eras too far ahead for present vision- 
ing. 

Even the "music of the spheres,'' far from 
approaching or approving free verse disorder, 
is set to swinging, splendid rhythm and 
rhyme. 



THE CORNUCOPIA OF RED AND 
GREEN COMFITS 1 

Currants and Honey ! 

Currants and Honey ! 

Bar-le-Duc in times of peace. 

Linden-tassel honey, 

Cherry-blossom, poppy-sweet honey, 

And round red currants like grape clus- 
ters, 

Red and yellow globes, lustered like 
stretched umbrella silk, 

Money chinking in town pockets, 

Louis 3! or in exchange for dockets of 
lading: 

So many jars, 

So many bushes shorn of their stars, 

So many honey-combs lifted from the 
hive-bars. 

1 Miss Lowell's poem was inspired by the following 
press report: 

"In the town of Bar-le-Duc in the Province of the Meuse 
in France the Prelect has issued instructions to the Mayor, the 
schoolmasters and the schoolmistresses to prevent the children 
under their care from eating candies which may be dropped 
from German aeroplanes, as candies which were similarly scat- 
tered in otber parts of the war zone have been found to contain 
poison and disease germs." 

53 



54 How to Read Poetry 

Straw-pale honey and amber berries, 
Red-stained honey and currant cher- 
ries, 
Sweetness flowing out of Bar-le-Duc by 

every train, 
It rains prosperity in Bar-le-Duc in times 

of peace. 
Holy Jesus ! when will there be mercy, 

when a ceasing 
Of War! 
The currant bushes are lopped and 

burned, 
The bees have flown and never returned, 
The children of Bar-le-Duc eat no more 

honey. 
And all the money in the town will not 

buy 
Enough lumps of sugar for a family. 
Father has two between sun and sun, 
So has mother, and little Jeanne, one, 
But Gaston and Marie — they have 

none. 
Two little children kneeling between the 

grape-vines, 
Praying to the starry Virgin, 



Red and Green Comfits 55 

They have seen her in church, shining 

out of a high window 
In a currant-red gown and a crown as 

smooth as honey. 
They clasp their hands and pray, 
And the sun shines brightly on them 

through the stripped Autumn vines. 

Days and days pass slowly by, 

Still they measure sugar in the grocery, 

Lump and lump, and always none 

For Gaston and Marie, 

And for little Jeanne, one. 

But listen, Children. Over there, 

In blue, peaked Germany, the fairies 

are. 
Witches who live in pine-tree glades, 
Gnomes deep in mines, with pickaxes 

and spades. 
Fairies who dance upon round grass 

rings, 
And a Rhine-river where a Lorelei 

sings. 
The kind German fairies know of your 

prayer, 



56 How to Read Poetry 

They caught it as it went through the 

air. 
Hush, Children ! Christmas is coming. 
Christmas, and fairies, and cornucopias 

of sugar-plums ! 

Hollow thunder over the Hartz moun- 
tains. 

Hollow thunder over the Black Forest. 

Hollow thunder over the Rhine. 

Hollow thunder over "Unter den Lin- 
den." 

Thunder kettles, 

Swung above green lightning fires, 

Forked and spired lightning 

Cooking candy. 

Bubble, froth, stew! 

Stir, old women; 

Stir, Generals and spur-heeled young 
officers; 

Stir, misshapen Kaiser, 

And shake the steam from your up- 
turned moustachios. 

Streaked and polished candy you make 
here, 



Red and Green Comfits $J 

With hot sugar and — other things; 

Strange powders and liquids 

Dropped out of little flasks, 

Drop — 

Drop — 

Into the bubbling sugar, 

And all Germany laughs. 

For years the people have eaten 

the currants and honey of Bar-le- 

Duc, 
Now they will give back sweetness for 

sweetness. 
Ha ! Ha ! Ha ! from Posen to Munich. 
Ha ! Ha ! Ha ! in Schleswig-Holstein. 
Ha ! Ha ! Ha ! flowing along with the 

Rhine waves. 
Ha ! Ha ! Ha ! echoing round the caves 

of Riigen. 
Germany splits its sides with laughing, 
And sets out its candles for the coming 

of the Christ-child. 

" Heilige Nacht ! " and great white birds 

flying over Germany. 
Are the storks returning in mid- Winter? 



58 How to Read Poetry 

"Heilige Nacht! " the tree is lit and the 

gifts are ready. 
Steady, great birds, you have flown past 

Germany, 
And are hanging over Bar-le-Duc, in 

France. 
The moon is bright, 
The moon is clear, 
Come, little Children, the fairies are 

here. 
The good German fairies who heard 

your prayer, 
See them floating in the star-pricked air. 
The cornucopias shake on the tree, 
And the star-lamps glitter brilliantly. 

A shower of comfits, a shower of balls, 
Peppermint, chocolate, marzipan falls. 
Red and white spirals glint in the moon. 
Soon the fairies answered you — 
Soon! 
Soon! 

Bright are the red and white streaked 
candies in the moonlight: 



Red and Green Comfits 59 

White corpse fingers pointing to the sky, 
Round blood-drops glistening like rubies. 
Fairyland come true : 
Just pick and pick and suck, and chew. 
Sugar and sweetness at last, 
Shiny stuff of joy to be had for the gath- 
ering. 
The blood-drops melt on the tongue, 
The corpse fingers splinter and crumble. 
Weep white tears, Moon. 
Soon ! So soon ! 

Something rattles behind a hedge, 

Rattles — rattles. 

An old skeleton is sitting on its thigh- 
bones 

And holding its giggling sides. 

Ha! Ha! Ha! 

Bar-le-Duc had currants red, 

Now she has instead her dead. 

Little children, sweet as honey, 

Bright as currants, 

Like berries snapped off and packed in 
coffins. 

The skeleton dances, 



60 How to Read Poetry 

Dances in the moonlight, 

And his fingers crack like castanets. 

In blue, peaked Germany 
The cooks wear iron crosses, 
And the scullery maids trip to church 
In new ribbons sent from Potsdam. 

— Amy Lowell. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE "NEW" POETRY, SO-CALLED 

THE first thing to be said about the 
"new" poetry is that its name is a mis- 
nomer. The term vers libre — free verse 
— may be new, but the thing itself is at least 
as old as Milton. 

In the "Samson Agonistes" choruses free 
verse of the freest and finest is employed to 
great effect — and because, as the poetic revo- 
lutionists of the present are loud in acclaim- 
ing, Milton saw and knew that not every need 
is filled by the regular rhythm. 

Southey and Shelley both at times worked 
in free verse or " rhythmus," as Harold W. 
Gammans has called this form of poetic ex- 
pression. The nineteenth century, antedat- 
ing the free verse wave and notoriety, 
saw much good work of the kind produced. 

A regular rhythm, to state the formal 
argument for free verse, is a sound-pattern, 
and conventionalized patterns never can be 

61 



62 How to Read Poetry 

fitted to every kind and type or idea or mate- 
rial. The strongest argument in favor of 
free verse lies in the fact that poetry, as an 
interpreter of life, must reproduce many 
kinds and phases of life aspects. For those 
emotional climaxes and crises which " strike 
the poet in broken flashes" — in swift, cha- 
otic, fragmentary perceptions — free verse 
offers a medium undeniably fluid and fine. 

It is for this very reason that free verse, 
" a verse-form based upon cadence," upon 
balanced "flow and rhythm" and more or 
less definite "time units" rather than upon 
rhyme, in all probability gradually will claim 
but its own place — a place assured and 
honored but perhaps not too large or promi- 
nent — in modern poetry. It has its own 
distinct and special virtues, but for the 
greater, more sustained events and emotions 
its medium will not adequately suffice. 

Whitman, long before the dawn of the 
recent free verse enthusiasm, employed free 
verse rhymes and cadences with absolute sure- 
ness and spontaneity. "Leaves of Grass" 
he described as " an attempt to give the spirit, 



The "New " Poetry, So-Called 63 

the body, and the man, new words, new poten- 
tialities of speech — an American, a cosmo- 
politan (for the best of America is the best 
cosmopolitanism) range of self expression." 
Whitman, therefore, antedated present use 
of the " language of the street," with its 
democratic revolt against conventionality and 
conventional implications, in a manner that 
did much to set free the contemporary poet 
from the custom-forged fetters of the past. 

"The Americans," again according to the 
sturdy Walt, " are going to be the most fluent 
and melodious-voiced people in the world — 
and the most fluent and the most perfect users 

of words The new times, the 

new people, the new vista" — how strange 
and terrible and colossal a vista, moreover, 
Whitman, although in a large sense prophet 
no less than poet, never dreamed — "need a 
tongue according — yes, and what is more, 
they will have such a tongue." 

Free verse, perhaps Whitman's u new 
tongue," may be summed quite simply. It 
means, in a word, little more than a combina- 
tion of revolt against the possibly over-stated 



64 How to Read Poetry 

but indubitable conventionality, mock mod- 
esty and sentimental prettiness of the Vic- 
torian era, and that periodical "return to the 
soil" or root or fundamentals of things that 
mankind experiences with cyclic and inevita- 
ble regularity. Much of it is being written 
for the same reason that the Elizabethan 
dramatists wrote beautiful blank verse; be- 
cause it represents the most easy and natural 
mode for the writers — as natural as the 
buoyant optimism and confidence of Vachel 
Lindsay, the grim pessimism of Masters or 
the tragic tenderness of Olive Tilford Dar- 
gan. Much more is being written because the 
writers, feeling a strong poetic impulse, fail 
to carry it to legitimate or logical conclusion, 
to complete the inner processes of composi- 
tion, or to take the pains necessary for poetic 
perfection. Much, much more is being writ- 
ten, has been written, from a desire to be in 
the poetic fashion, to attract attention, to 
achieve notoriety by becoming bold, brazen, 
or bizarre. 

The "new" poets themselves are greatly 
at variance in regard to the purpose and vir- 



The "New " Poetry, So-Called 65 

tues, or even quality and character, of free 
verse. William Dean Howells, later the 
author of successful free verse narratives, 
once described free verse, rather contemptu- 
ously, as " shredded prose." John Bur- 
roughs, vitally interested in all serious poetic 
developments, has gone on record as finding 
that many of the free verse writers seem to 
have no real message. 

"They strive so awfully after form," he 
told a recent seeker after information. " If 
they had anything real to say, the form would 
come of itself and there would be no need of 
all this contortion and acrobation. Now, 
there was an osseous frame to Whitman's 
poetry. He had something so vital to say 
that his message almost said itself" — in the 
manner, be it noted, that Mr. Ficke attributes 
to poetic messages of far different order. 
11 Yet I remember what a great reviser of his 
own work he was. Loose as his verse form 
may seem to some, he was as careful with 
every syllable of it as though he were forg- 
ing a delicate chain of gold." 

On the other hand, Ezra Pound, one of 



66 How to Read Poetry 

the earliest and most persistent of poetic in- 
surgents, before the insurgent era of his 
poetic development known as a writer of 
delicate conventional poems and translations, 
not only believes that the poet having " some- 
thing real to say" can say it most effectively 
in the free verse manner, but can advance tell- 
ing arguments to support even the striving 
" so awfully after form." 

" Can you teach the American poet," he 
asked Harriet Monroe, successful poet of 
more than one order and editor of Poetry, 
when this now famous Chicago " Magazine 
of Verse" was still in its tentative stage — 
" can you teach the American poet that poetry 
is an art, an art with a technique, with media, 
an art that must be in constant flux — a con- 
stant change of manner — if it is to live? Can 
you teach him that it is not a pentametric echo 
of the sociological dogma printed in last year's 
magazines?" 

The art of much of Mr. Pound's poetry 
surely is the art that conceals art, while his 
technique is quite too uncertain — or involved 
— for popular conception. But Mr. Pound 



The "New " Poetry, So-Called 67 

and his followers, in getting away from cer- 
tain belittling limitations of the majority of 
their predecessors, in all reasonable probabil- 
ity have rendered the poetic art good service. 
Its career as a spectacular sensation ended — 
Pound, we remember, has admitted certain of 
his earlier free verse work merely " a seven 
days' wonder in Chicago" — the right of 
untrammeled poetic freedom established, 
free verse may well settle down as a regular 
and recognized branch of poetic expression. 

Josephine Preston Peabody, exquisite poet 
of the " old" order, feels that there is not so 
much a "new movement" in poetry as " an 
eddy, related to movement, or progress, as a 
side-eddy is related to the main current of a 
river." 

The " working faith" of this veritable 
44 sweet singer" stands thus self character- 
ized: "To the worker, his choice of tools. 
To the reader, his own delights." 

Sara Teasdale, another exquisite worker 
with the standard poetic medium, voices a 
similar catholicity of feeling. 

" There is no surer sign of a vigorous art 



68 How to Read Poetry 

than violent differences of opinion among the 
people who practice it. So far as the respec- 
tive merits of free verse and melodic rhymed 
verse go, it seems to me that the question is 
wholly one of the individuality of the poet 
and of the nature of his subject. It is a ques- 
tion of fitness. The idea of such a poem as 
Burns' ' Ye Banks and Braes o' Bonnie Doon ' 
in free verse is painful. On the other hand, 
the war poem by Amy Lowell called 'The 
Cornucopia of Red and Green Comfits' [the 
poem immediately preceding this chapter] is 
so perfectly wedded to its form — a vivid, 
rapid, free verse with unexpected and most 
telling rhymes — that one could not conceive 
how it could have been so powerful in any 
other form." 

Again, Edwin Arlington Robinson, in- 
cluded by Amy Lowell among the six notable 
American poets, all of later manner, studied 
in her illuminating ''Tendencies in Modern 
American Poetry," yet who as frequently in- 
dulges in beautiful rhyming as in free verse 
rhythms, entertains similar ideas. 

"You ask me," so the dictum included by 



The "New " Poetry, So-Called 69 

Lloyd R. Morris in the interesting " anthol- 
ogy of opinion on the aims and tendencies of 
the American literature of today and tomor- 
row " called u The Young Idea " and mainly 
devoted to poetic matters, " if I think there is 
a new movement in poetry, and my reply is 
that there is always a new movement in 
poetry. There is always a new movement in 
everything, including each new inch of each 
new revolution of the earth around the sun. 
But if you mean to ask me if this new move- 
ment implies necessarily any radical change 
in the structure or in the general nature of 
what the world has agreed to call poetry, I 
shall have to tell you that I do not think so. 
In referring to a new movement 
I assume that you refer primarily to vers 
libre — a form, or lack of form, that may or 
may not produce pleasant results.' 5 

Miss Lowell herself, American high priest- 
ess of the "new movement," says: 

" When people speak of the ' New Poetry/ 
they generally mean that poetry which is writ- 
ten in the newer, freer form. But such a dis- 
tinction is misleading in the extreme, for, 



*]0 How to Read Poetry 

after all, forms are merely forms, of no par- 
ticular value unless they are the necessary and 
adequate clothing to some particular manner 
of thought." 

The "New Poetry" to Miss Lowell, then, 
means, mainly, a new manner of poetic think- 
ing, incidentally a new manner of expressing 
that thinking in lines and words. 

Some such basic understanding or concep- 
tion is highly necessary, surely, when consid- 
ering such widely differing exponents of the 
"new" poetic school as Robert Frost, and 
Masters, as Ezra Pound and Eunice Tietjens, 
or Carl Sandburg and " H. D." 

Says Miss Lowell further: 

"The modern poets are less concerned 
with dogma and more with truth. They see 
in the universe a huge symbol, and so absolute 
has this symbol become to them that they 
have no need to dwell constantly upon its 
symbolic meaning. For this reason, the sym- 
bol has taken on a new intensity, and is given 
much prominence. What appear to be pure 
nature poems are of course so, but in a differ- 
ent way from most nature poems of the plder 



The "New " Poetry, So-Called 71 

writers ; for nature is not now something sep- 
arate from man, man and nature are recog- 
nized as part of a whole, man being a part 
of nature, and all falling into a place in a vast 
plan, the key to which is natural science. 

"In some modern American poets this at- 
titude is more conscious than in others, but all 
have been affected by it; it has modified 
poetry, as it is more slowly modifying the 
whole of our social fabric. 

"What sets the poets of today apart from 
those of the Victorian era is an entire differ- 
ence of outlook. Ideas believed to be funda- 
mental have disappeared and given place to 
others. And as poetry is the expression of 
the heart of man, so it reflects this change to 
the smallest particle." 

All of which, of course, is but another man- 
ner of saying that modern poetry, the poetry 
of all nations, but especially, perhaps, of 
America, is merely undergoing changes notice- 
able in all other forms of human existence 
and development. But it should be noted, in 
this connection, that not all modern poets 
feel the need of the highly symbolic medium 



72 How to Read Poetry 

— so symbolic, in some cases, as to become 
decidedly obscure. Consider, for illustration, 
that doubly characteristic excerpt from the 
" Lustra" of Ezra Pound, " Women Before 
a Shop:" 

The gew-gaws of false amber and false 

turquoise attract them. 
" Like to like nature : " those agglutinous 

yellows ! 

Which delightful fragment, like many of 
its distinctly imagistic fellows, indubitably 
means more to the writer than to the general 
reader. The question is whether or not it is 
wise or artistic to invade poetic areas with 
material so bound, in Mr. Pound's own words 
concerning certain of his own poems, to be- 
come " a very depleted fashion, .... 
A homely, transient antiquity." Such poetry, 
if, for the moment and for the sake of argu- 
ment, we concede the title, is not of the sort 
that lives. 

Or analyze, for second specimen, Walter 
Conrad Arensberg's " Ing." 



The "New" Poetry, So-Called 73 

Ing? Is it possible to mean ing? 
Suppose 

for the termination in g 

a disoriented 
series 
of the simple fractures 

in sleep. 
Soporific 
has accordingly a value for soap 

so present to 
sew pieces. 

And p says: Peace is. 
And suppose the i 

to be big in ing 
as Beginning. 

Then Ing is to ing 
as aloud 

accompanied by times 
and the meaning is a possibility 

of ralsis. 

Decidedly, distinctly, " revolutionary," not 
to say interesting, that strange — collection of 
words. But is it poetry? Defer decisive 
judgment by terse recapitulation of the 
"new" poetry's principal tenets and aims as 
expressed in the " Imagistic Creed" self ac- 
claimed by the comparatively small group of 
writers who, because of the marked peculiari- 
ties of their chosen modes, have been credited 
with more than their fair share of "new 
poetry" glory and fame. 

1. To use the language of common speech, 
but to employ always the exact word, not the 



74 How to Read Poetry 

near-exact, nor the merely decorative word. 

2. To create new rhythms — as the expres- 
sion of new moods — and not to copy old 
rhythms, which merely echo old moods. We 
do not insist upon " free verse " as the only 
method of writing poetry. We fight for it as 
a principle of liberty. We believe that the 
individuality of a poet may often be better 
expressed in free verse than in conventional 
form. In poetry a new cadence means a new 
idea. 

3. To allow absolute freedom in the choice 
of subject. It is not good art to write badly 
of aeroplanes and automobiles, nor is it neces- 
sarily bad art to write well about the past. 
We believe passionately in the artistic values 
of modern life, but we wish to point out that 
there is nothing so uninspiring nor so old- 
fashioned as an aeroplane of the year 191 1. 

4. To present an image (hence the name: 
"Imagist"). We are not a school of paint- 
ers, but we believe that poetry should render 
particulars exactly and not deal in vague gen- 
eralities, however magnificent and sonorous. 
It is for this reason that we oppose the cosmic 



The "New " Poetry, So-Galled 75 

poet, who seems to us to shirk the real diffi- 
culties of his art. 

5. To produce poetry that is hard and 
clear, never blurred nor indefinite. 

6. Finally, most of us believe that concen- 
tration is of the very essence of poetry. 

The brief creed so expressed — not 
pledged — by the primary Imagists was pre- 
ceded by this significant declaration: 

" These principles are not new; they have 
fallen into desuetude. They are the essen- 
tials of all great poetry, indeed of all great 
literature." 

Miss Lowell amplifies: 

"It is not primarily on account of their 
forms, as is commonly supposed, that the Im- 
agist poets represent a changed point of 
view; it is because of their reactions toward 
the world in which they live." 

The "new" poetry, however, setting aside 
the work of the Imagists, who, by their decla- 
ration of poetic independence and practical 
outworking of its tenets, would seem at once to 
have "done their bit" and served their turn, 



j6 How to Read Poetry 

and such ephemeral ultra-novelty-mongers as 
the Vorticists, Spectricists, etc. — mainly, as 
previously suggested, is concerned with new 
ideas quite as much as with new modes of 
expression — which makes the task of distin- 
guishing between followers of the " old" and 
" new " schools occasionally rather difficult. 

Miss Lowell, who must be admitted an au- 
thority in such connection, includes in her 
recent study only six poets, namely, Edward 
Arlington Robinson, Robert Frost, Edgar 
Lee Masters, Carl Sandburg, "H. D." or 
Mrs. Richard Aldington (Hilda Doolittle), 
and John Gould Fletcher — paying but pass- 
ing tribute to Vachel Lindsay, William Rose 
Benet, Louis Untermeyer, James Oppenheim, 
Eunice Tietjens, Ezra Pound, and others of 
generally accredited "new poetry" ilk. 

For general purposes, because the six poets 
named typify all the combined and distin- 
guishing characteristics of the newer poetic 
era, her grouping may be maintained. 

Mr. Robinson and Mr. Frost, in Miss 
Lowell's opinion, " represent various things 
in the 'new movement' — realism, direct 



The "New" Poetry, So-Called 77 

speech, simplicity, and the like." The work 
of Mr. Masters and Mr. Sandburg she re- 
gards as " being the most revolutionary that 
America has yet produced." Fletcher and 
"H. D.," of course, are Imagists pure and 
simple. The English Imagists Miss Lowell 
defines as Richard Aldington, F. S. Flint, and 
D. H. Lawrence. ( " H. D." though resident 
in London, is o*f American rearing and birth. ) 

Since illustration is of all educational meth- 
ods most useful, these and other representa- 
tive "new" poets herewith shall be allowed 
to speak for themselves. 

Of all the "new" poetry no single ex- 
ample, perhaps, has been so much, so vari- 
ously quoted as the "Oread" of "H. D.," 
largely because its six lines comprise such per- 
fect specimen of the " cadenced verse " which 
is really free verse in that it utterly relin- 
guishes all thought of regulation meters and 
rhymes. 

Whirl up, sea — 

Whirl your pointed pines. 

Splash your great pines 



78 How to Read Poetry 

On our rocks. 

Hurl your green over us — 

Cover us with your pools of fir. 

" It will be quickly seen/' says Miss Lowell, 
discussing " Oread," " that this poem is made 
up of five cadences, ' Whirl up, sea — ' is one 
cadence; 'Whirl your pointed pines,' is an- 
other; l Splash your great pines on our rocks,' 
is a third; 'Hurl your green over us,' a 
fourth; and the fifth, 'Cover us with your 
pools of fir'." 

Mr. and Mrs. Aldington, it is explained, 
never "permit themselves occasional lines 
which might be timed by the old scansion," 
not even should these occur most naturally. 
They are faithful to the newer "time units 
which are in no sense syllabic," depending 
upon the manner of reading — the hurrying 
or delaying of such words as seem necessary 
— to " fill out the swing of the lines." 

"Sea Gods" is one of the flower poems 
for which "H. D." is famous, and it also is 
one of her most characteristic. Part of this 
poem follows: 



The "New " Poetry, So-Galled 79 

But we bring violets, 
Great masses — single, sweet, 
Wood-violets, stream-violets, 
Violets from a wet marsh. 

Violets in clumps from hills, 
Tufts with earth at the roots, 
Violets tugged from rocks, 
Blue-violets, moss, cliff, river-violets. 

Yellow violets' gold, 
Burnt with a rare tint — 
Violets like red ash 
Among tufts of grass. 

We bring deep-purple 
Bird-foot violets. 

We bring the hyacinth-violets, 
Sweet, bare, chill to the touch — 
And violets whiter than the in-rush 
Of your own white surf. 

Contrast this lovely offering of the violets 
to the sea gods, its daringly beautiful reitera- 



So How to Read Poetry 

tion of the violet theme, with one of the 
equally famous rain poems of John Gould 
Fletcher, the other American Imagist best 
known for this kind of work. 

Over the roof-tops race the shadows of 

clouds : 
Like horses the shadows of clouds charge 

down the street. 

Whirlpools of purple and gold, 

Winds from the mountains of cinna- 
bar, 

Lacquered mandarin moments, palan- 
quins swaying and balancing 

Amid the vermilion pavilions, against 
the jade balustrades; 

Glint of the glittering wings of dragon- 
flies in the light; 

Silver filaments, golden flakes settling 
downwards, 

Rippling, quivering flutters, repulse and 
surrender, 

The sun broidered upon the rain, 

The rain rustling with the sun. 



The "New" Poetry, So-Called 81 

Over the roof-tops race the shadows of 

clouds : 
Like horses the shadows of clouds charge 

down the street. 

To catch a glimpse of the scope and ver- 
satility of this poet, who believes that " poetry 
is capable of as many gradations in cadence 
as music is in time," follow perusal of the just 
given poem, with its strong, sweeping, rush- 
ing movement, by perusal of the following, 
also representing — rather than describing — 
rain: 

The spattering of the rain upon pale ter- 
races 

Of afternoon is like the passing of a 
dream 

Amid the roses shuddering 'gainst the 
wet green stalks 

Of the streaming trees — the passing of 
the wind 

Upon the pale lower terraces of my 
dream 

Is like the crinkling of the wet gray 
robes 



82 How to Read Poetry 

Of the hours that come to turn over the 
urn 

Of the day and spill its rainy dream. 

Vague movement over the puddled ter- 
races: 

Heavy gold pennons — a pomp of sol- 
emn gardens 

Half hidden under the liquid veil of 
spring: 

Far trumpets like a vague rout of faded 
roses 

Burst 'gainst the wet green silence of dis- 
tant forests: 

A clash of cymbals — then the swift 
swaying footsteps 

Of the wind that undulates along the 
languid terraces. 

Pools of rain — the vacant terraces 

Wet, chill, and glistening 

Towards the sunset beyond the broken 
doors of today. 

It might almost be said that the whole 
theory and philosophy of free verse, from 
origin to popular justification, lies in the pic- 



The "New " Poetry, So-Called 83 

ture-making suggestions, the slow, languorous 
rhythm of those lines. 

Edgar Lee Masters, with his wonderful 
psychology and power of character portrait- 
ure, his hard, ironic humor, and his encroach- 
ing obsession of sex, may be placed at the 
gamut end farthest opposed to the position 
occupied by Fletcher and " H. D." To many 
his remarkable " Spoon River Anthology" 
belongs rather in the realm of psychology 
than of poetry, but the poetic beauty of count- 
less included cadences, as the incisive appeal 
of the haunting, embodying epitaphs, is unde- 
niable. The tragedy that Mr. Masters loves 
best — in the " Anthology," indeed, is lit- 
tle but tragedy, mental, physical, moral, spir- 
itual, and that of the grimmest — is well 
expressed in u Elsa Wertman," piteous as 
strong. 

I was a peasant girl from Germany, 
Blue-eyed, rosy, happy, and strong. 
And the first place I worked was at 

Thomas Greene's. 
On a summer's day when she was away 



84 How to Read Poetry 

He stole into the kitchen and took me 
Right in his arms and kissed me on my 

throat, 
I turning my head. Then neither of us 
Seemed to know what happened. 
And I cried for what would become of 

me. 
And cried and cried as my secret began 

to show. 
One day Mrs. Greene said she under- 
stood, 
And would make no trouble for me, 
And, being childless, would adopt it. 
(He had given her a farm to be still.) 
So she hid in the house and sent out 

rumors, 
As if it were going to happen to her. 
And all went well and the child was 

born — They were so kind to me. 
Later I married Gus Wertman, and 

years passed. 
But— at political rallies when sitters-by 

thought I was crying 
At the eloquence of Hamilton Greene — 
That was not it. 



The "New " Poetry, So-Called 85 

No! I wanted to say: 

That's my son ! That's my son ! 



"Hamilton Greene," a subsequent epitaph, 
gives another phrase of the indicated story 
and rounds out the typical Masters manner 
and idea. 

I was the only child of Frances Harris 

of Virginia 
And Thomas Greene of Kentucky, 
Of valiant and honorable blood both. 
To them I owe all that I became, 
Judge, member of Congress, leader in 

the State. 
From my mother I inherited 
Vivacity, fancy, language; 
From my father will, judgment, logic. 
All honor to them 
For what service I was to the people ! 

The peculiar form in which the "Anthol- 
ogy" poems — supposedly written or spoken 
by the dead folk in the cemetery — are cast 



86 How to Read Poetry 

provides opportunity for curious effects, 
curiously quaint and impressive, but Mr. 
Masters' half realistic, half romantic method 
has been effectively employed in other ways. 
Carl Sandburg, quite differently grim and 
stern, yet with an underlying vein of tender- 
ness clearly to be discerned by the sympa- 
thetic, shall not here be represented by " Chi- 
cago," which first brought him national if not 
international reputation, but by excerpts from 
"The Four Brothers," (forming part of the 
later " Notes for War Songs") and from 
the earlier group of poems generically en- 
titled "Days." 

Look! It is four brothers in joined 
hands together, 
The people of bleeding France, 
The people of bleeding Russia, 
The people of Britain, the people of 
America — 
These are the four brothers, these are 

the four republics. 
At first I said it in anger as one who 
clenches his fist in 



The "New " Poetry, So-Called 87 

wrath to fling his knuckles in the face 
of someone taunting; 

Now I say it calmly as one who has 
thought it over and over again at 
night, among the mountains, by the 
sea-combers in storm. 

I say now, by God, only fighters today 
will save the world, nothing but fight- 
ers w T ill keep alive the names of those 
who left red prints of bleeding feet at 
Valley Forge in Christmas snow. 

On the cross of Jesus, the sword of 
Napoleon, the skull of Shakespeare, 
the pen of Tom Jefferson, the ashes of 
Abraham Lincoln, or any sign of the 
red and running life poured out by 
the mothers of the world, 

By the God of morning glories climb- 
ing blue the doors of quiet homes, by 
the God of tall hollyhocks laughing 
glad to children in peaceful valleys, 
by the God of new mothers wishing 
peace to sit at windows nursing babies, 

I swear only reckless men, ready to 
throw away their lives by hunger, 



88 How to Read Poetry 

deprivation, desperate clinging to a 
single purpose imperturbable and un- 
daunted, men with the primitive guts 
of rebellion, 

Only fighters gaunt with the red brand 
of labor's sorrow on their brows and 
labor's terrible pride in their blood, 
men with souls asking danger — only 
these will save and keep the four big 
brothers. 

Goodnight is the word, goodnight to the 
kings, the czars, 

Goodnight to the kaiser. 

The breakdown and the fade-away be- 
gins. 

The shadow of a great broom, ready to 
sweep out the truth, is here. 

One finger is raised that counts the 
czar, 

The ghost who beckoned men who come 
no more — 

The czar has gone to the winds on God's 
great dustpan, 

The czar a pinch of nothing, 

The last of the gibbering Romanoffs. 



The "New " Poetry, So-Called 89 

Out and goodnight — 
The ghosts of the summer palaces 
And the ghosts of the winter palaces ! 
Out and out, goodnight to the kings, the 
czars, the kaisers. 

Another singer will speak, 

And the kaiser, the ghost who gestures 

a hundred million sleeping -waking 

ghosts, 
The kaiser will go onto God's great 

dustpan — 
The last of the gibbering Hohenzol- 

lerns. 
Look! God pities this trash, God waits 

with a broom and a dustpan, 
God knows a finger will speak and count 

them out. 

11 Under the Harvest Moon," one of the 
"Days" group, shows Mr. Sandburg in dif- 
ferent but equally characteristic mood. 

Under the harvest moon, 
When the soft silver 



9<3 How to Read Poetry 

Drips shimmering 
Over the garden nights, 
Death, the gray mocker, 
Comes and whispers to you 
As a beautiful friend 
Who remembers. 

Under the summer roses 
When the fragrant crimson 
Lurks in the dusk 
Of the wild red leaves, 
Love, with little hands, 
Comes and touches you 
With a thousand memories, 
And asks you 
Beautiful, unanswerable questions. 

Mr. Sandburg, it will be seen, is a poet of 
large thoughts, large impulses, large ideas, 
and large rhythms. Easy to understand why 
not for him, virile to the point of brutality, 
strong to the recurrent edge of crudeness, 
rhyming, lilting line limits, or even the meas- 
ured bounds and restrictions of majestic 
blank verse. 



The "New " Poetry, So-Called 9 r 

Remain, of Miss Lowell's grouping, only 
Robert Frost and Edwin Arlington Robinson 
to be considered. Robinson, musical, pol- 
ished, brilliant, many-toned poet, shall be 
more adequately considered later, his well- 
earned poetic honors being by no means of 
exclusively "new" order. But it may be 
said, in passing, that Robinson is one of 
the most intellectual contemporary English- 
writing poets, just as Frost is one of the 
most intuitive. The work of these two 
men, indeed, has much in common, though 
that of Robinson is more warmly colored. 
Mr, Frost is a poetic intellectual too, but 
to him much that Mr. Robinson carefully, 
consciously records has become second na- 
ture. Mr. Frost, again, is more distinctly 
marked by the "New England influence," 
in that, while he happened to be born in San 
Francisco, much of his life has been passed 
in Massachusetts, where he still resides. 

Miss Lowell says that Frost is " as New 
England as Burns is Scotch, Synge Irish, or 
Mistral Provencal." Robinson in spirit, if 
not in expression, suggests a wider range. 



92 How to Read Poetry 

Frost, whose poems first knew English 
publication, in " North of Boston," accord- 
ing to its author a sadly piquant "book of 
people," tells moving stories, generally un- 
rhymed, about men, women, and happenings 
inseparable from the stern soil whence they 
sprang. These poems, which mark and typify 
a poetic tendency distinctly new at the time of 
their first appearance, and still distinctly im- 
pressive, are too long for present repetition. 
The Frost nature poems and pastorals, deli- 
cately austere but delicately depictive and fine 
as an exquisite etching, are subject to no such 
restriction. They exemplify, moreover, the 
gift for lovely rhyming with which this poet 
is highly endowed and which he still does 
not disdain to use upon occasion. Take, for 
example, the graceful thought, less firm, clean 
cut, and vigorous than many to come later, 
but of indubitable poetic virtue, that makes so 
real a fine October morning. 

Retard the sun with gentle mist; 
Enchant the land with amethyst. 
Slow, slow! 



The "New" Poetry, So-Called 93 

For the grapes' sake, if they were all, 
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost, 
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost — 
For the grapes' sake along the wall. 

This fragment suggests anew that the line 
of demarcation between "old" and "new" 
poetry frequently lies rather in attitude than 
outworking, save, of course, where the most 
amazingly individual specimens are consid- 
ered. Any real poet, of any age, of any order, 
might, in so far as verbalism is concerned, 
have written that stanza, though not every 
real poet might have put into it just the dis- 
tinguishing tone and spirit. A fair quotation 
from the later "Birches" may suggest more 
distinctive Frost material and mode. 

When I see the birches bend to left and 

right 
Across the lines of straighter, darker 

trees, 
I like to think some boy's been swinging 

them. 
But swinging doesn't bend them down 

to stay. 



94 How to Read Poetry 

Ice-storms do that. Often you must 
have seen them 

Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning 

After a rain. They click upon themselves 

As the breeze rises, and turn many- 
colored 

As the stir cracks and crazes their 
enamel. 

Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed 
crystal shells 

Shattering and avalanching on the snow- 
crust — 

Such heaps of broken glass to sweep 
away 

You'd think the inner dome of heaven 
had fallen. . . . . 



I'd like to get away from earth awhile 
And then come back to it and begin over. 
May no fate wilfully misunderstand me 
And half grant what I wish and snatch 

me away 
Not to return. Earth's the right place 

for love : 



The "New " Poetry, So-Called 95 

I don't know where it's likely to go 
better. 

Fd like to go by climbing a birch tree, 

And climb black branches up a snow- 
white trunk 

Toward heaven, till the tree could bear 
no more, 

But dipped its top and set me down 
again. 

That would be good both going and 
coming back. 

One could do worse than be a swinger 
of birches. 

Mainly, it may be said, Frost is a poet of 
tragedy, the hushed and hidden tragedy of 
soul rather than body. But in his passion 
for humanity, his love of nature, his sense 
of human and earth values, he proves himself 
a poet of all emotions, as, perhaps, of all 
time. 

The contention that, as Miss Lowell main- 
tains, the " so-called 'new movement' in 
American poetry is evidence of the rise of 
a native school" receives substantial support 



96 How to Read Poetry 

from the fact that so many American poets 
now employ the newer medium that search 
for characteristic examples suffers from em- 
barrassment of riches. But from the wide 
and full field offered, certain phases and pro- 
ductions of two other unusual poets, Vachel 
Lindsay and Eunice Tietjens, shall be briefly 
surveyed. 

Lindsay, true poet of his time, yet with 
traditional traits inherited from the poets of 
the ages, not only fulfils Macaulay's defini- 
tion of poetry as " the art of employing words 
in such a manner as to produce an illusion on 
the imagination, the art of doing by means 
of words what the painter does by means of 
colors," but he apparently believes, with 
Bailey, that 

Poetry is itself a thing of God's; 
He made His prophets poets. 

For Lindsay has as clear a gift for the 
kind of prophecy based on sympathetic com- 
prehension and interpretation as for brave 
and lyric singing. The Lindsay productions, 
be they " poem games " like " The Potatoes," 



The "New" Poetry, So-Called 97 

" King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba," 
or such masterly efforts as "The Congo" 
and "General Booth Enters Heaven," are 
not only rhythmic and rhymeful but strongly 
indicative and trenchant. Lindsay is a true 
modern in regard to freshness of subject and 
treatment, a true poet in his unfailing ability 
to "produce an illusion on the imagination," 
to read and reproduce the hearts and emo- 
tions of his fellows. 

"The Congo," "This, my song is made 
for Kerensky," here are great poems, of the 
kind that makes for the rebuilding of human- 
ity. "The Chinese Nightingale" is real 
poetry of another order, that which "pro- 
duces the illusion" of vivid color and move- 
ment and strongly stimulates the fancy. "The 
Congo," with its stirring, voodoo-like refrain, 
4 Then I saw the Congo creeping through 
the black," should not be wronged by piece- 
meal quotation, but a vision or so from the 
breast of Chang, the San Francisco laundry- 
man in "The Chinese Nightingale," dream- 
ing of bygone glories to the music of the 
"gray small bird" who 



98 How to Read Poetry 

Sang as though for the soul of him 
Who ironed away in that bower dim 

may without injustice be shared. 

" Where is the princess, loved forever, 
Who made Chang first of the kings of 
men?" 

And the joss in the corner stirred again; 
And the carved dog, curled in his arms, 

awoke, 
Barked forth a smoke-cloud that whirled 

and broke. 
It piled in a maze round the ironing- 
place, 
And there on the snowy table wide 
Stood a Chinese lady of high degree, 
With a scornful, witching, tea-rose 

race • • • • 
Yet she put away all form and pride, 
And laid her glimmering veil aside 
With a childlike smile for Chang and 
for me. 



The u New" Poetry, So-Called 99 

Then this did the noble lady say : 

" Bird, do you dream of our home- 
coming day 

When you flew like a courier on before 

From the dragon-peak to our palace- 
door, 

And we drove the steed in your singing 
path — 

The ramping Dragon of laughter and 
wrath ; 

And found our city all aglow, 

And knighted this joss that decked it so ? 

There were golden fishes in the purple 
river 

And silver fishes and rainbow fishes. 

There were golden junks in the laughing 
river, 

And silver junks and rainbow junks : 

There were golden lilies by the bay and 
river, 

And silver lilies and tiger-lilies, 

And tinkling wind-bells in the gardens of 
the town 

By the black-lacquer gate 

Where walked in state 



ioo How to Read Poetry 

The kind king Chang 

And his sweet-heart mate . . . . 

With his flag-born dragon 

And his crown of pearl .... 
and .... jade; 

And his nightingale reigning in the mul- 
berry shade, 

And sailors and soldiers on the sea- 
sands brown, 

And priests who bowed them down to 
your song — 

By the city called Han, the peacock 
town, 

By the city called Han, the nightingale 
town, 

The nightingale town." 

. . • • • 

" I have forgotten 

Your dragons great, 

Merry and mad and friendly and bold. 

Dim is your proud lost palace-gate. 

I vaguely know 

There were heroes of old, 

Troubles more than the heart could 
hold, 



The "New" Poetry, So-Called 101 

There were wolves in the woods 

Yet lambs in the fold, 

Nests in the top of the almond 
tree .... 

The evergreen tree and the mulberry 
tree .... 

Life and hurry and joy forgotten, 

Years on years I but half remem- 
ber .... 

Man is a torch, then ashes soon, 

May and June, then dead December, 

Dead December, then again June. 

Who shall end my dream's confusion? 

Life is a loom, weaving illusion .... 

I remember, I remember 

There were ghostly veils and 
laces .... 

In the shadowy, bowery places .... 

With lovers' ardent faces 

Bending to one another, 

Speaking each his part, 

They infinitely echo 

In the red cave of my heart. 

" Sweetheart," sweetheart, sweetheart ! " 

They said to one another. 



102 How to Read Poetry 

They spoke, I think, of perils past, 
They spoke, I think, of peace at last. 
One thing I remember : 
" Spring came on forever, 
Spring came on forever," 
Said the Chinese nightingale. 

Quite another interpretation and aspect of 
China, as of "new" poetry, is suggested by 
Eunice Tietjens in "The Shop," taken from 
the slight yet rich collection of poetic " Profiles 
from China," on which the present poetic 
fame of the writer principally is based. The 
articles sold in the shop specified " are to be 
burned at funerals for the use of the dead 
in the spirit world," and Mrs. Tietjens, ren- 
dering them real as the weather, proves the 
creative, memory-searing genius hers in no 
slight degree. 

The master of the shop is a pious man, 
in good odor with the priests. 

He is old and honorable, and his white 
moustache droops below his chin. 

Mencius, I think, looked so. 



The "New" Poetry, So-Called 103 

The shop behind him is a mimic world, 
a world of pieties and shams — the 
valley of remembrance — the dwell- 
ing place of the unquiet dead. 

Here on his shelves are ranged the 
splendor and the panoply of life, silk 
in smooth gleaming rolls, silver in in- 
gots, carving and embroidery and 
jade, a scarlet bearer-chair, a pipe for 
opium 

Whatever life has need of, it is here, 

And it is for the dead. 

Whatever life has need of, it is here. 

Yet it is here in sham, in effigy, in tor- 
tured compromise. 

The dead have need of silk. Yet silk is 
dear, and there are living backs to 
clothe. 

The rolls are paper Do not 

look too close. 

The dead, I think, will understand. 

The carvings, too, the bearer-chair, the 
jade — yes, they are paper; and the 
shining ingots, they are tinsel. 



104 How to Read Poetry 

Yet they are made with skill and loving 
care! 

And if the priest knows — surely he must 
know ! — when they are burned they'll 
serve the dead as well as verities. 

So living mouths can feed. 

The master of the shop is a pious man. 

He has attained much honor and his 

white moustache droops below his 

chin. 
"Such an one," he says, "I burned for 

my own father. And such an one my 

son will burn for me. 
For I am old, and half my life already 

dwells among the dead." 

And, as he speaks, behind him in the 
shop I feel the presence of a hovering 
host, the myriads of the immortal 
dead, the rulers of the spirit in this 
land 

For in this kingdom of the dead they 
who are living cling with fevered 
hands to the torn fringes of the 



The "New" Poetry, So-Called 105 

mighty past. And if they fail a 
little, compromise 

The dead, I think, will understand. 

Here, it will be seen, is an interesting and 
ultra-individual variation of the newer poetry 
manner, u at once realistic and romantic," 
a variation of " polyphonic prose" alike 
novel, dignified, and comprising at once the 
best and most specialized characteristics of 
that manner. Mrs. Tietjens is another of 
the poetic artists who employ words much 
as their fellows of the brush employ paint. 

"New" poets of varied but worth while 
tenor might be cited almost without number. 
Few writers of any power, it would seem, 
but have written at least one or two free 
verse poems, finding therein, it may be, new 
channel for the outpouring of poetic fervor 
not readily to be restrained or restricted, new 
outlet for the unnamed urge and surge that, 
yeast-wise, affects contemporary humanity. 
Many of these poems deserve to live, and 
will live, long after the "new poetry" excite- 



106 How to Read Poetry 

ment has attained just level, lost the meretri- 
cious notoriety of faddism, and become a 
recognized and accepted member of poetic 
society. Many of the writers in all prob- 
ability gradually will assume less prominent 
but more assured poetic position as their 
poetic uncertainties are left behind by the 
calm maturing of the new poetic thought. 

The work of Miss Lowell, in this cinematic 
glimpse to be fairly if not adequately repre- 
sented by "The Cornucopia of Red and 
Green Comfits, " partakes of this nature. 
Never a victim of the wildest poetic insur- 
gency, the Lowell poetry already has attained 
increasing strength, dignity, and sweetness, 
year by year is becoming less bizarre, more 
chastened, of richer, more spiritual flavor. 
Another decade, two at most, and its arrest- 
ing "newness" almost inevitably will have 
been forgotten, while its sterling value to the 
cause of poetic freedom and flexibility must 
remain. 

So, too, albeit differently, with the work of 
that faithful and devoted acolyte at the altar 
of poetic beauty, Harriet Monroe. 



The "New" Poetry, So-Called 107 

Miss Monroe, because of the cordial hos- 
pitality of her " Magazine of Verse," "Poet- 
ry," to the "new" poets, in popular regard 
quite naturally is ranged with the "new" 
poets. But Miss Monroe, whose magazine 
also has been generously hospitable to poetry 
of more standard order, herself is limited to 
no particular school or movement. She has 
produced good poems of free, elastic nature, 
but many of her best and best known num- 
bers belong in more formal category. The 
"Columbian Ode" written for the Colum- 
bian Exposition not only antedated the "new 
movement" by some years but stands far re- 
moved from anything like "new poetry" 
ideals and manner. One of the most widely 
loved Monroe poems, the "Love Song" 
that so well withstands careful criticism and 
analysis, is of almost geometric perfection 
and finish. This poem, as proving the point 
that few real artists are restricted to any one 
mood or manner, shall be here enjoyed. 

I love my life, but not too well 
To give it to thee like a flower, 



108 How to Read Poetry 

So it may pleasure thee to dwell 

Deep in its perfume but an hour. 
I love my life, but not too well. 

I love my life, but not too well 
To sing it note by note away, 

So to thy soul the song may tell 
The beauty of the desolate day. 

I love my life, but not too well. 

I love my life, but not too well 
To cast it like a cloak on thine, 

Against the storms that sound and swell 
Between thy lonely heart and mine. 

I love my life, but not too well. 

New and enchanting and infinitely varied 
poetic voices, to carry the thought a little fur- 
ther, continually arise and will arise among 
the English-speaking people. The tale of 
today must be sadly incomplete tomorrow, 
as that of yesterday lacks much at the pres- 
ent moment. For this reason alone, if for 
no other, anything approaching a full cata- 
logue of study of contemporary poets, " new " 



The "New" Poetry, So-Called 109 

or classic would be as absurd as impossible. 
But here is no distant attempt at such study — 
merely a signpost modestly showing a way to 
the poetic kingdom of wondrous glory and 
" many mansions," suggesting as simplest sub- 
stitutes for the long-lost magic carpet, certain 
well-known and well-mannered guides. 



THE SOLDIER 

If I should die, think only this of me : 
That there's some corner of a foreign 
field 
That is forever England. There shall be 
In that rich earth a richer dust con- 
cealed; 
A dust whom England bore, shaped, 
made aware, 
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her 
ways to roam, 
A body of England's, breathing English 
air, 
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns 
of home. 
And think, this heart, all evil shed 
away, 
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less 
Gives somewhere back the thoughts 

by England given; 
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy 
as her day; 



112 How to Read Poetry 

And laughter, learnt of friends; and 
gentleness, 
In hearts at peace, under an English 
heaven. 

— Rupert Brooke. 



CHAPTER V 

FORMAL POETRY: THE SONNET, THE ODE, 
THE ELEGY, AND BLANK VERSE 

THE appeal of strictly formal poetry 
popularly is supposed to be extremely 
limited. A tradition obtains to the effect that 
formal poetry — blank verse, the sonnet, 
odes, epics, elegies, religious poems — are 
read only by the poetically elect, the academic, 
the student, the "highbrow." As a matter 
of fact, the exact reverse frequently is true. 

The Bible, containing some of the finest 
blank verse and unrhymed poetry in existence, 
through long ages has been the solace of 
many unlettered readers who frankly have 
loved it as much for its manner as substance. 
The twenty-third Psalm, the one hundred and 
third Psalm, the " charity chapter" of Corin- 
thians — aye, even in the weakened version of 
certain modernized renderings — the " Song 
of Solomon," various portions of Job and 
Isaiah, these are among the numerous bib- 

113 



114 How to Read Poetry 

lical extracts that, comprising poetry intrin- 
sically good and moving, always have been 
dear to the common heart. Let us quote, for 
supporting illustration, the passage from the 
"Song" exquisite as universally beloved. 

Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come 
away. 

For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is 
over and gone ; 

The flowers appear on the earth; the 
time of the singing of birds is come, 
and the voice of the turtle is heard in 
our land; 

The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, 
and the vines with the tender grape 
give a good smell. Arise, my love, 
my fair one, and come away. 

Think, again, of that equally cherished and 
uplifting passage from Ecclesiastes : 

In the day when the keepers of the house 
shall tremble, and the strong men 
shall bow themselves, and the grind- 



Formal Poetry 115 

ers cease because they are few, and 
those that look out of the windows 
be darkened, 

And the doors shall be shut in the streets, 
when the sound of the grinding is 
low, and he shall rise up at the voice 
of the bird, and all the daughters of 
musick shall be brought low; 

Also when they shall be afraid of that 
which is high, and fears shall be in 
the way, and the almond tree shall 
flourish, and the grasshopper shall be 
a burden, and desire shall fail: be- 
cause man goeth to his long home, and 
the mourners go about the streets : 

Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the 
golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher 
be broken at the fountain, or the 
wheel broken at the cistern. 

Then shall the dust return to the earth 
as it was: and the spirit shall return 
unto God who gave it. 

What could keep such poetry from the love 
of all those, learned or unlearned, who are 



n6 How to Read Poetry 

awake to the beauty of high thought, of per- 
fect imagery, of the prevailing needs and 
impulses of human nature? Call it poetry, 
call it scripture, call it what you will or nothing 
at all, it still will be held dear for its calm 
and classic beauty, for the perfect thing it is. 
And that other splendid and almost equally 
appreciated biblical poem, the prayer which 
King Solomon made when he " kneeled down 
upon his knees before all the congregation of 
Israel, and spread forth his hands toward 
heaven." But a few verses must here repre- 
sent that which deserves to be included in 
poetic anthologies of many kinds. 

If thy people go out to war against their 
enemies by the way that thou shalt 
send them, and they pray unto thee 
toward this city which thou hast 
chosen, and the house which I have 
built for thy name; 

Then hear thou from the heavens their 
prayer and their supplication, and 
maintain their cause. 

If they sin against thee, (for there is no 



Formal Poetry 1 17 

man which sinneth not,) and thou be 
angry with them, and deliver them 
over before their enemies, and they 
carry them away captives unto a land 
far off or near; 

Yet if they .... return to thee 
with all their heart and with all their 
soul in the land of their captivity, 
whither they have carried them cap- 
tives, and pray toward their land, 
which thou gavest unto their fathers, 
and toward the city which thou hast 
chosen, and toward the house which I 
have built for thy name : 

Then hear thou from the heavens, even 
from thy dwelling place, their prayer 
and their supplications, and maintain 
their cause, and forgive thy people 
which have sinned against thee. 

In passages such as this may be found at 
once the reason and the justification of formal 
poetry. It is the poetry of high moods, of 
exalted thoughts and emotion. The verses 
quoted, always majestic and impelling, would 



1 18 How to Read Poetry 

be out of place in a gay gathering, out of 
harmony upon such occasions as well might 
be graced by the joyous lyric from the " Song 
of Solomon." So, in like manner, might any 
light or lively specimen of poetry, of what- 
ever variety, lack appeal in life's solemn 
moments without in slightest degree losing 
specific appeal or virtue. The strongest 
lover of poetry, as of music or art or human- 
ity or nature, wants not always the lighter, 
more gladsome moods and aspects of his 
charmer. Many a rare spirit, many a 
temperament largely compound of tender- 
ness and gaiety, at times might turn readily 
from the lilting melody of " Pippa Passes " 
to the stately measure, the spiritual grandeur 
of Bryant's "Forest Hymn" or "Thana- 
topsis." Note the simple majesty, the im- 
pressive application of these lines from the 
latter. 

To him who in the love of Nature holds 
Communion with her visible forms, she 

speaks 
A various language ; for his gayer hours 



Formal Poetry 119 

She has a voice of gladness, and a smile 
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides 
Into his darker musings, with a mild 
And healing sympathy, that steals away 
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When 

thoughts 
Of the last bitter hour come like a 

blight 
Over thy spirit, and sad images 
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and 

pall, 
And breathless darkness, and the nar- 
row house, 
Make thee to shudder and grow sick at 

heart; — 
Go forth, under the open sky, and list 

To Nature's teachings 

• • • • • 

So shalt thou rest, and what if thou with- 
draw 
In silence from the living, and no friend 
Take note of thy departure? All that 

breathe 
Will share thy destiny. The gay will 
laugh 



120 How to Read Poetry 

When thou art gone, the solemn brood 

of care 
Plod on, and each one as before will 

chase 
His favorite phantom ; yet all these shall 

leave 
Their mirth and their employments, and 

shall come 
And make their bed with thee. As the 

long train 
Of ages glides away, the sons of men — 
The youth in life's fresh spring, and he 

who goes 
In the full strength of years, matron, 

and maid, 
The speechless babe, and the gray- 
headed man — 
Shall one by one be gathered to thy 

side, 
By those, who in their turn shall follow 

them. 

So live, that when thy summons comes to 

join 
The innumerable caravan, which moves 



Formal Poetry 121 

To that mysterious realm, where each 

shall take 
His chamber in the silent halls of death, 
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at 

night, 
Scourged to his dungeon, but sustained 

and soothed 
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy 

grave 
Like one who wraps the drapery of his 

couch 
About him, and lies down to pleasant 

dreams. 

That last stanza perhaps has comforted, 
soothed, stirred, and sustained more troubled 
souls than even Henley's trumpet call " Invic- 
tus" or the highly contemporary effusions of 
Edmund Vance Cooke or Herbert Kaufman. 
But not to every taste or occasion will it 
prove most pleasing. Due enjoyment of 
poetry, as previously suggested, depends no 
little upon the reader's state of soul and 
mind. 

Those popular favorites, Wordsworth's 



122 How to Read Poetry 

" I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," Newman's 
"Lead, Kindly Light," and Wolfe's "Burial 
of Sir John Moore," with countless diversely 
touching poetic brethren, depend, for highest 
appreciation, on the spiritual or intellectual 
reactions of the reader, as do, indeed, hosts 
of more strictly formal poems. The fact is 
that formal poetry is to life and literature in 
general what the sonata is to music or sculp- 
ture is to art. 

Formal poetry, to particularize, is the 
poetry of unusual or specially stressed occa- 
sions. One would not willingly spend entire 
days listening to Beethoven or Handel or 
Wagner, yet there are times when the lesser 
musicians fail utterly to interpret soul condi- 
tions, emotional attitudes, and strivings. To 
live in a sculpture gallery would seem to the 
majority exceedingly oppressive, but who has 
not found some single statue or group of 
statuary satisfying in the extreme? Thus it 
is, naturally enough, in the realms of verbal 
music and art. 

When the glad spirit dances happily along 
life's highways and byways, then the time 



Formal Poetry 123 

for jocund songs and lightsome lyrics. When 
moods are tempestuous, the currents of 
thought or emotion too strong or resistless 
for the bounding shores of regular meter, 
then rhymeless poetry, free verse, has its sea- 
son of delight and honor. When the rhythm 
of life is dainty, staccato, tripping, the puls- 
ing chante royale, the delicate triolet, the 
quick-witted vers de societe may be sure of 
warm welcome. When death, dramatic love, 
glory or other superlative passion absorbs the 
attention, then the formal, the classic poetry 
of greatness is enjoyed and understood. To 
each, in poetry as in all things, its own pure 
moment and mood. 

The sonnet, for example, has been greatly 
wronged by too general misapprehension. 
Younglings naturally loving poetry are 
warned away from the sonnet as from some- 
thing stiff and artificial. Men and women 
who would find in it no difficulty if unpreju- 
diced, fight shy of the sonnet because it has 
been described to them as difficult of compre- 
hension or construction. As a matter of fact, 
the sonnet is no more artificial or rigid in con- 



124 How to Read Poetry 

struction than any other standard verse form 
if obediently followed. And the chiseled 
elegance of the sonnet has a high, profound 
beauty like that of a marble bust. 

U A Shakespeare sonnet" sounds, perhaps, 
decidedly formal. The poetry reading be- 
ginner would not, it may be, feel especially 
drawn toward it. And yet — read 

Love is not love 

Which alters when it alteration finds, 

or this, the eighteenth of those one hundred 
and fifty-four Shakespeare sonnets, those in- 
surpassable love poems, that attest the 
"cold" sonnet's possible amatory warmth 
and worth. 

Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day? 

Thou art more lovely and more tem- 
perate : 

Rough winds do shake the darling buds 
of May, 

And Summer's lease hath all too short 
a date: 

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven 
shines, 



Formal Poetry 125 

And often is his gold complexion 

dimmed; 
And every fair from fair sometime de- 
clines, 
By chance or nature's changing course 

untrimmed : 
But thy eternal Summer shall not fade 
Nor lose possession of that fair thou 

owest; 
Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in 

his shade, 
When in eternal lines to time thou grow- 

est: 
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can 

see, 
So long lives this, and this gives life to 

thee. 

Or glance, for ripe expression of sonneted 
emotion of other, later order, over this jewel 
from Olive Tilford Dargan's tenderly tragic 
" Sonnets for One Drowned at Sea." 

Today I went among the mountain folk 
To hear the gentle talk most dear to me. 



126 How to Read Poetry 

I saw slow tears, and tenderness that 

woke 
From sternest bed to light a lamp for 

thee. 
And " Is it true ? " hope asked and asked 

again, 
And " It is true," was all that I could say, 
And pride rose over love to hide gray 

pain 
As eyes tears might ungrace were turned 

away. 
So much they loved thee I was half de- 
coyed 
By human warmth, to feel thee near, but 

when 
I put my hand out all the earth was void, 
And vanished even these near-weeping 

men. 
Thus each new time I find that thou art 

gone, 
Anew do I survive the world alone. 

The realms of poetry, new and old alike, 
are rich in sonnets giving the melodic lie to 
all the old, depopularizing libels. It is but 



Formal Poetry 127 

necessary to read with an open mind to know 
this. The sonnet was a great favorite with 
those " great lovers," that "nest of singing 
birds," the Elizabethan poets. More than 
two thousand sonnets were written within the 
last ten years of the sixteenth century. Ed- 
mund Spenser in a single year composed 
fifty-eight sonnets celebrating his erotic ex- 
periences and emotions. Sir Philip Sidney 
wrote many besides that possibly best and 
best known of his productions, "With how 
sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the Skies ! " 
All down and along the poetic ages the sonnet 
has been treasured by those desiring to lend 
high or fine thought fitting poetic expression. 
Could better frame be provided chivalric loy- 
alty than Rupert Brooke's "The So.ldier" — 

11 If I should die, think only this of me " 

or John McCrae's " In Flanders' Fields," the 
recent swan songs and war sonnets that ren- 
dered their writers instantaneously, undyingly 
famous. The testimony of innumerable son- 
nets not only of carven correctness but widely 
beloved easily might be up-piled, arrayed. 
The elegy, again, frequently has been ac- 



128 How to Read Poetry 

cused of being too abstract, too remote to be 
loved or " understanded of the common peo- 
ple." Why? Once more because of the 
traditional misbelief that it is ultra conven- 
tional, cold, set far apart from ordinary hu- 
man thoughts and feelings and issues. Well 
might be offered, in opposing argument, these 
lines from Milton's "Lycidas," noblest of 
English elegiac works : 

Yet once more, O ye Laurels, and once 

more 
Ye Myrtles brown, with Ivy never sere, 
I come to pluck your Berries harsh and 

crude, 
And with forced fingers rude, 
Shatter your leaves before the mellow- 
ing year. 
Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear, 
Compel me to disturb your season due : 
For Lycidas is dead, dead in his prime, 
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his 

peer: 
Who would not sing for Lycidas? he 
knew 



Formal Poetry 129 

Himself to sing, and build the lofty 

rhyme. 
He must not float upon his watery 

bier 
Unwept, and welter to the parching 

wind, 
Without the meed of some melodious 

tear. 



Now thou art gone, and never must re- 
turn! 

Thee, Shepherd, thee the Woods, and 
desert Caves, 

With wild Thyme and the gadding Vine 
o'ergrown, 

And all their echoes mourn. 

The Willows and the Hazel Copses 
green, 

Shall now no more be seen, 

Fanning their joyous Leaves to thy soft 
lays. 

As killing as the Canker to the Rose, 

Or Taint-worm to the weanling Herds 
that graze, 



130 How to Read Poetry 

Or Frost to Flowers, that their gay 

wardrobe wear, 
When first the White-thorn blows; 
Such, Lycidas, thy loss to Shepherd's 

ear. 

What is found here but timeless, world- 
wide feeling, natural as sympathetic, fittingly 
worded and but fitly tinged and flavored by 
the special thought and mode of Milton's 
time? What, in "Adonais," Shelley's lovely 
lament and elegy for Keats, but the universal, 
world-old love of comrade for comrade, all 
the deeper and richer for the wonderful 
poetic setting of expression and verbal frame? 

I weep for Adonais — he is dead! 
Oh, weep for Adonais! though our 

tears 
Thaw not the frost which binds so 

dear a head! 
And thou, sad Hour, selected from all 

years 
To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure 

compeers, 



Formal Poetry 131 

And teach them thine own sorrow. 
Say: "With me 

Died Adonais ; till the Future dares 
Forget the Past, his fate and fame 
shall be 
An echo and a light unto eternity ! " 



Oh, weep for Adonais! — the quick 

Dreams, 
The passion-winged ministers of 

thought, 
Who were his flocks, whom near the 

living streams 
Of his young spirit he fed, and whom 

he taught 
The love which was its music, wander 

not — 
Wander no more, from kindling brain 

to brain, 
But droop there, whence they sprung; 

and mourn their lot 
Round the cold heart, where, after 

their sweet pain, 



132 How to Read Poetry 

They ne'er will gather strength, or find 

a home again. 
• ••••• 

He lives, he wakes — 'tis Death is 

dead, not he; 
Mourn not for Adonais — Thou 

young Dawn, 
Turn all thy dew to splendor, for from 

thee 
The spirit thou lamentest is not gone ; 
Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to 

moan! 
Cease, ye faint flowers and fountains, 

and thou Air, 
Which like a mourning veil thy scarf 

hadst thrown 
O'er the abandoned Earth, now leave 

it bare 
Even to the joyous stars which smile on 

its despair! 

He is made one with Nature : there is 

heard 
His voice in all her music, from the 

moan 



Formal Poetry 133 

Of thunder, to the song of night's 
sweet bird; 

He is a presence to be felt and known 

In darkness and in light, from herb 
and stone, 

Spreading itself where'er that Power 
may move 

Which has withdrawn his being to its 
own; 

Which wields the world with never- 
wearied love, 
Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it 
above. 

He is a portion of the loveliness 

Which once he made more lovely; he 
doth bear 

His part, while the one Spirit's plas- 
tic stress 

Sweeps through the dull dense world, 
compelling there, 

All new successions to the forms they 
wear; 

Torturing the unwilling dross that 
checks its flight 



134 How to Read Poetry 

To his own likeness, as each mass may 

bear, 
And bursting in its beauty and its 

might 
From trees and beasts and men into the 

Heaven's light. 

Who, with a sweet and early-dead friend 
and beloved in memory, spiritual vision, 
would not thrill responsive to the mighty 
music of the few quoted "Adonais" stanzas? 
The popular message of the poem is in no 
whit lessened because of its majestic rhythms, 
its harmonious rhymes, its sweeping, splen- 
did swing. Gray's " Elegy," with its sweet 
succession of fine verses strung like rare 
pearls on a delicate thought-thread; Tenny- 
son's " In Memoriam," with its unforgettable 
expression and strong if sentimental treat- 
ment of a tenderly hallowed subject; Steven- 
son's self-directed " Requiem," these are too 
well known, too well loved to need merest 
hint of quotation. Richard le Gallienne's 
11 What of the Darkness ? " dedicated to " the 
happy dead people," strikes a similar note. 



Formal Poetry 135 

What of the darkness? Is it very fair? 

Are there great calms? and find we si- 
lence there? 

Like soft-shut lilies, all your faces glow 

With some strange peace our faces never 
know, 

With some strange faith our faces never 
dare — 

Dwells it in Darkness? Do you find it 
there? 

Is it a Bosom where tired heads may lie ? 

Is it a Mouth to kiss our weeping dry? 

Is it a Hand to still the pulse's leap? 

Is it a Voice that holds the runes of 
sleep? 

Day shows us not such comfort any- 
where — 

Dwells it in Darkness? Do you find it 
there? 

Out of the Day's deceiving light we 

call — 
Day that shows man so great, and God 

so small, 



136 How to Read Poetry 

That hides the stars, and magnifies the 

grass — 
O is the Darkness too a lying glass ! 
Or undistracted, do you find truth there ? 
What of the Darkness? Is it very fair? 

Is not the Eternal Question here asked so 
beautifully that the alarming elegiac feature 
of the poem is forgotten? Practically every 
human being, at some time, upon some occa- 
sion, must know how to read, to enjoy such 
setting. Even more modern, yet no less age- 
less, is the note of U A Club-Man's Requiem," 
Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi's highly 
individual expression of a widely shared 
thought. 

Warren has gone; and we who loved him 
best 

Can't think of him as 

" entered into rest." 
But he has gone; has left the morning 
street, 

The clubs no longer echo to his feet, 
Nor shall we see him lift his yellow wine 



Formal Poetry 137 

To pledge the random host — the purple 
vine. 

At doors of other men his horses wait, 
His whining dogs scent false their master's 
fate ; 

His chafing yacht at harbor mooring lies ; 
" Owner ashore," her idle pennant flies. 
Warren has gone — 

Forsook the jovial ways 
Of winter nights — turned from his well- 
loved plays, 

The dreams and schemes and deeds of busy 
brain, 

And pensive habitations built in Spain. 
Gone, with his ruddy hopes ! And we who 
knew him best 
Can't think of him as " entered into rest." 

So when the talk dies out or lights burn 
dim 
We often ponder what is keeping him — 
What destiny that all-subduing will, 
That golden wit, that love of life, fulfil? 
For we who silent smoke, who loved him 
best, 
Can't fancy Warren " entered into rest." 



138 How to Read Poetry 

Closely akin to elegiac poetry, equally mov- 
ing and natural, is that which celebrates the 
universal dread and dislike of growing old. 
Stoddard's graceful "The Flight of Youth " 
already has been quoted, but this no better 
expresses the feeling of average humanity 
when confronted by "the western slope" or 
even the first gray hair than does Longfel- 
low's " Morituri Salutamus," with its artistic 
and comforting suggestions of a change not 
entirely sad. 

But why, you ask me, should this tale 
be told 

To men grown old, or who are growing 
old? 

It is too late ! Ah, nothing is too late 

Till the tired heart shall cease to palpi- 
tate. 

What then? Shall we sit idly down and 

say 
The night hath come ; it is no longer day ? 
The night hath not yet come ; we are not 

quite 



Formal Poetry 139 

Cut off from labor by the failing light; 
Something remains for us to do or dare; 
Even the oldest tree some fruit may 
bear. 



For age is opportunity no less 

Than youth itself, though in another 

dress, 
And as the evening twilight fades away 
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by 

day. 

Formal poetry? Yes, but of the kind that 
creeps close to the heartstrings. Only formal, 
like the commonplace but invaluable greet- 
ing " Good morning ! " in custom and outline. 
Really as warmly human, as full of sempi- 
ternal human sympathy, comprehension and 
solace as Swinburne's "Hertha" or Words- 
worth's "Ode on the Intimations of Immor- 
tality" — parts of which, incidentally, shall 
here serve as shining example of another 
much feared and maligned poetic form, the 
ode. 



140 H'ow to Read Poetry 

There was a time when meadow, grove, 

and stream, 
The earth, and every common sight, 
To me did seem 
Apparelled in celestial light, 
The glory and the freshness of a dream. 
It is not now as it hath been of yore — 
Turn whereso'er I may, 
By night or day, 
The things which I have seen I now can 
see no more. 

The Rainbow comes and goes, 

And lovely is the Rose; 

The Moon doth with delight 
Look round her when the heavens are 
bare; 

Waters on a starry night 

Are beautiful and fair; 
The sunshine is a glorious birth; 
But yet I know, where'er I go, 
That there hath passed away a glory 
from the earth. 



Formal Poetry 141 

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; 
The Soul that rises with us, our life's 
Star, 
Hath had elsewhere its setting, 

And cometh from afar: 
Not in entire forgetfulness, 
And not in utter nakedness, 
But trailing clouds of glory do we come 

From God who is our home: 
Heaven lies about us in our infancy ! 
Shades of the prison-house begin to close 

Upon the growing Boy, 
But he beholds the light, and whence it 
flows, 
He sees it in his joy; 
The Youth, who daily farther from the 
East 
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest, 
And by the vision splendid 
Is on his way attended; 
At length the Man perceives it die away, 
And fade into the light of common day. 



O joy ! that in our embers 



142 How to Read Poetry 

Is something that doth live, 

That nature yet remembers 

What was so fugitive ! 
The thought of our past years in me 

doth breed 
Perpetual benediction: not indeed 
For that which is most worthy to be 

blest — 
Delight and liberty, the simple creed 
Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest, 
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in 
his breast — 

Not for these I raise 

The song of thanks and praise; 
But for those obstinate questionings 

Of sense and outward things, 

Fallings from us, vanishings ; 

Blank misgivings of a Creature 
Moving about in worlds not realized, 
High instincts before which our mortal 

Nature 
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised : 

But for those first affections, 

Those shadowy recollections, 
Which, be they what they may, 



Formal Poetry 143 

Are yet the fountain-light of all our 

day, 
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing; 
Uphold us, cherish, and have power 
to make 
Our noisy years seem moments in the 

being 
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake, 

To perish never; 
Which neither listlessness, nor mad en- 
deavor, 
Nor Man nor Boy, 
Nor all that is at enmity with joy, 
Can utterly abolish or destroy ! 

Hence, in a season of calm weather, 
Though inland far we be, 
Our Souls have sight of that immortal 
sea 
Which brought us hither, 
Can in a moment travel thither 
And see the children sport upon the 

shore, 
And hear the mighty waters rolling ever- 
more. 



144 How to Read Poetry 

And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, 
and Groves, 

Forbode not any severing of our 
loves ! 

Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your 
might; 

I only have relinquished one delight 

To live beneath your more habitual 
sway. 

I love the Brooks, which down their 
channels fret, 

Even more than when I tripped lightly 
as they: 

The innocent brightness of a new-born 
Day 
Is lovely yet; 

The Clouds that gather round the set- 
ting sun 

Do take a sober coloring from an eye 

That hath kept watch o'er man's mor- 
tality ; 

Another race hath been, and other palms 
are won. 

Thanks to the human heart by which we 
live, 



Formal Poetry 145 

Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and 

fears, 
To me the meanest flower that blows can 

give 
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for 

tears. 

u An ode! That an ode?" one can hear 
certain surprised readers exclaiming. " Why, 
I thought an ode was something dry or 
deary or too classical for ordinary, every- 
day understanding or pleasure ! And that's 
delightfully good stuff." 

So it is, dear friend and fellow sufferer 
from too common poetic misapprehension, so 
it is, and so are hosts of other fine " formal M 
poems, to say nothing of the wide range of 
religious poetry that need only here be sug^ 
gested, and of classic translations, ancient 
and modern, that need but to be known to be 
enjoyed. 

Many a supposedly languid poetry student, 
induced to read poetry rightly, beginning in 
the right place, would find him or herself in 
the position of the Moliere character who 



146 How to Read Poetry 

had talked prose all his life without knowing 
it. "Good stuff" and good reading — u just 
reading" as the astonished Morley critic re- 
marked in an earlier chapter — abounds in 
poetry that, because of its hypothetieally dif- 
ficult character, comparatively seldom gets 
beyond the task-work of the high school 
senior or college freshman " specializing in 
English literature." 

So read, it too often takes color, chameleon- 
like, from its surroundings and is mentally 
catalogued with the unhappy "skip" books 
of our childhood. Read as it might and 
should be, formal poetry would forge impor- 
tant links in the pleasure armor fortifying 
every normal human's soul. 



SPRING NIGHT 

The park is filled with night and fog, 
The veils are drawn about the world, 

The drowsy lights along the paths 
Are dim and pearled. 

Gold and gleaming the empty streets, 
Gold and gleaming the misty lake, 

The mirrored lights like sunken swords, 
Glimmer and shake. 

Oh, is it not enough to be 
Here with this beauty over me ? 
My throat should ache with praise, and I 
Should kneel in joy beneath the sky. 
Oh, beauty, are you not enough? 
Why am I crying after love 
With youth, a singing voice and eyes 
To take earth's wonder with surprise? 
Why have I put off my pride, 
Why am I unsatisfied, 
I for whom the pensive night 
147 



148 How to Read Poetry 

Binds her cloudy hair with light, 
I for whom all beauty burns 
Like incense in a million urns? 
Oh, beauty, are you not enough? 
Why am I crying after love? 

— Sara Teasdale. 



CHAPTER VI 

NARRATIVE, DRAMATIC, AND DESCRIPTIVE 
POETRY 

NARRATIVE poetry, frequently listed 
among the least popular of its breth- 
ren, really is one of the most popular forms 
of poetic expression. It began with the earli- 
est known races of humanity; it will continue 
while humanity inhabits the face of the globe. 
Perennially declared dead, the narrative 
poem as perennially arises anew and re- 
freshed to confound its unjust judges. From 
the primitive Anglo-Saxon "scop," who 
originated his poetic stories and songs as he 
delivered them, down through the profes- 
sional or amateur gleeman who often repeated 
the story-poems of others, the ancient min- 
strels, the wandering ballad singers, and the 
medieval troubadours to such later narrative 
poets as Moore, Scott, Byron, Tennyson, 
Browning, Longfellow, Frost, Noyes, Mase- 
field, Gibson, Howells, Lindsay, and Mas- 

149 



150 How to Read Poetry 

ters, the course of narrative poetry may be 
traced straight and true. 

The same intent, the same spirit, more- 
over, has informed all these successive dev- 
otees of the poetic story. Chaucer's " Can- 
terbury Tales " and Masefield's " The Widow- 
in the Bye-Street," Meredith's "Love in the 
Valley," Henry B. Fuller's " Lines Long and 
Short," Howells' "The Daughter of the 
Storage," and Tennyson's "Godiva" all 
are moved by the same springs, follow the 
same well recognized if not always clearly 
formulated natural and poetic laws. 

The narrative poem, long or short, archaic 
or ultra-modern, romantic or adventurous, is 
eternally beloved of the people because it 
satisfies two instinctive desires or tastes — 
perhaps needs — of human nature. These 
are story-hunger and harmonic feeling. The 
mind is pleased by the narrative's progres- 
sion, the senses stirred or soothed by cadences 
rhythmic or rhyming. The narrative poem, 
also, presents a concrete theme in a concrete 
way. 

And just as human fondness always has 



Narrative Poetry 151 

crowned the narrative poem, so, always, the 
narrative poem caters to the same aspects 
and instincts of general human nature. The 
narrative poem of the present day is pre- 
cisely the same, allowing for due difference 
of time, customs, conventions, as the narra- 
tive poem of the middle ages. This, at least 
in part, accounts for the unchanging popu- 
larity of the great epics, such as the " Iliad" 
and the " Odyssey," of the Scotch ballads out 
of which " Marmion " and " The Lady of the 
Lake" grew naturally, of " Hiawatha," 
" The Ancient Mariner," and " Lalla Rookh," 
of "The Idyls of the King," and the Norse 
sagas, of the Indian, East Indian, and oriental 
folk-tales and recitals, of all the semi-historic, 
semi-romantic lyrics and legends of all the 
human kindred and races and tongues. 

Infants, as has been said before, delight 
in rhyme, especially the rhyme that shapes 
itself into a story. What natural child pre- 
fers not a Mother Goose rhyme, a jingle, to 
a plain prose statement of fact? 

Infant races, as also has been said before, 
delight in the rhyming story, the narrative 



152 How to Read Poetry 

poem. Witness the popularity of the tribal 
singer, the oriental story teller, the minstrel 
in all ages and climes. 

Growing and fully grown infants never 
quite outgrow the love for the rhyming story, 
nor do growing and fully grown races and 
nations. War poems — poems of war heroes 
— are as dear to the heart of humanity now 
as during the Wars of the Roses, the period 
of the Norman Conquest, the Viking era or 
those far, fair, poetry-haloed days of early 
Greece and Rome. 

Narrative poems, to particularize lightly, 
are almost as varied in kind, form, and nature 
as prose narratives, or as human nature. 
Briefly, they range themselves into the heroic 
or romantic poem story of the primitive or 
Middle Ages; the realistic poem story, of 
blank verse, free verse or rhyming order, 
that, under different titles and grades of ap- 
preciation, has come down from the dawn- 
days of mankind's beginning; the short and 
simple story-lyric; and the episodic poem 
story or poem story in little, in miniature, that 
is as typically and almost solely characteristic 



Narrative Poetry 153 

of America as the episodic prose short story 
so dear to the American heart. 

Perhaps the best, as one of the best known, 
examples of this variety of poem is Edwin 
Arlington Robinson's " Richard Cory," a 
psychological-dramatic story interpretation 
that for force, vitality, vivid depiction and 
nutshell terseness scarce could further go. 

Mr. Robinson in "Flammonde" tells an- 
other, longer rhyming story that, as with 
11 Richard Cory," is avidly devoured by men 
and women wont, as a rule, to assert that 
" poetry makes no appeal to me. 

The man Flammonde, from God knows 

where, 
With firm address and foreign air — 
With news of nations in his talk 
And something royal in his walk — 
With glint of iron in his eyes, 
But never doubt, nor yet surprise, 
Appeared, and stayed, and held his head 
As one by kings accredited 

until, by sheer force of personality, he had 
transformed a tight little American town 



154 How to Read Poetry 

through enlargement of its vision. Flam- 
monde serves as hero — intensely real though 
always with that strange, haunting sense of 
the remote about his vivid chronicle — of an- 
other almost exclusively American story 
type, the type that indicates rather than act- 
ually tells the embodied story. A suggestive 
poem-sketch of very different key and tenor 
but endowed with the same half-hinted vitality 
is Zona Gale's " Mother." 

I wish I had said more. So long, so long 
About your simple tasks I watched you, 

dear; 
I knew you craved the word you did not 

hear. 
I knew your spirit, brave and chaste and 

strong, 
Was wistful that it might not do the 

wrong; 
And all its wistfulness and all its fear 
Were in your eyes whenever I was 

near. 
And yet you always went your way with 

song. 



Narrative Poetry 155 

All prodigal of smiles for other eyes 
I led my life. At last there came a day 
When with some careless word I turned 

away 
From what you fashioned for a sweet 

surprise. 
Ah, now it is too late for me to pour 
My vase of myrrh — would God I had 

said more! 

Charles Hanson Towne's delicate poem- 
sketch "It Rained All Day" enshrines an- 
other mother in just this same loving 
penumbra of faintly shadowed glory and 
grace. 

It rained all day, the day she died, 
And yet she thought it sweet and fair; 
She said the sunshine kissed her hair, 
And then she slept, all satisfied. 

It rained all day: She woke again 
And whispered that the sky was blue. 
Ah me ! Thank God she never knew 
How cold and dreary fell the rain. 



156 How to Read Poetry 

So like her life ! It rained all day, 
And yet she thought it all was bright; 
She loved and toiled all day and night — 
She never thought the skies were gray. 

And in the compressed beauty of Jessie B. 
Rittenhouse's " Paradox" may not an entire 
tragedy of the emotions be found? 

I went out to the woods today 

To hide away from you, 
From you a thousand miles away — 

But you came, too. 

And yet the old dull thought would stay, 

And all my heart benumb — 
If you were but a mile away 

You would not come. 

Certain of Edgar Lee Masters' poems, 
notably many of those in the "Anthology," 
are true narrative poems in that through their 
few and seemingly slight strokes the progress 
of a whole life may be noted. An earlier, 
less sharply cut narrative poem is Words- 



Narrative Poetry 157 

worth's "Lucy," which gently, sweetly, tells 
the story of a lovely little life from start to 
close. The three stanzas herewith quoted 
have been beloved by countless dissimilar hu- 
mans; in all probability they will be remem- 
bered and quoted long after the writer's 
"Wanderer," "Yarrow Visited," "Yarrow 
Revisited," and other far more pretentious 
poems have gone the way of all flesh and 
song. 

She dwelt among the untrodden ways, 

Beside the springs of Dove, 
A maid whom there were none to praise 

And very few to love: 

A violet by a mossy stone 

Half hidden from the eye ! 
Fair as a star, when only one 

Is shining in the sky. 

She lived unknown, and few could know 

When Lucy ceased to be; 
But she is in her grave, and oh, 

The difference to me ! 



1 58 How to Read Poetry 

An interesting vista of poetic study and 
conjecture is opened by comparison of 
" Lucy " with Browning's " Evelyn Hope " — 

Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead, 
Sit and watch by her side an hour — 

another superlatively tender, simple, and lov- 
ing life-study of a sweet young girl. 

For contrasting example of that which 
might be called the " grand manner" in re- 
gard to narrative poetry may be instanced 
Meredith's " Love in the Valley" — that long 
and colorful poem so splendid in substance 
and style. 

Tennyson's narrative poems, u Locksley 
Hall," "Godiva," "In the Children's Hos- 
pital," "The North Countryman," "Riz- 
pah," etc., are better known, perhaps, than 
almost any other modern narrative poems, 
and they, too, occasionally partake of the 
grand manner. In marked contrast, and even 
more musical, is the simple, singing verse, 
rioting in rhyme as a flowering plant in bios- 



Narrative Poetry 159 

soms, of Alfred Noyes. Noyes is at his best, 
perhaps, in u The Barrel Organ" and " In 
Old Japan." Of the former, in one sense 
rather a descriptive than a true narrative 
poem, in another truest narrative poem in 
that it tells the whole story of a city, a gener- 
ously appetizing excerpt shall be given here. 

There's a barrel-organ caroling across a 
golden street, 
In the City as the sun sinks low; 
And the music's not immortal; but the 
world has made it sweet 
And fulfilled it with the sunset glow. 
And it pulses through the pleasure of 
the City and the pain 
That surrounds the singing organ like 
a large eternal light; 
And they've given it a glory and a part 
to play again 
In the Symphony that rules the day 
and night. 

Yes; as the music changes, 
Like a prismatic glass, 



160 How to Read Poetry 

It takes the light and ranges 

Through all the moods that pass ; 

Dissects the common carnival 
Of passions and regrets, 

And gives the world a glimpse of all 
The colors it forgets. 



Go down to Kew in lilac-time, in lilac- 
time, in lilac-time; 

Go down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn't far 
from London!) 

And you shall wander hand in hand with 
love in summer's wonderland; 

Go down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn't far 
from London!) 

The cherry-trees are seas of bloom and 

soft perfume and sweet perfume, 
The cherry-trees are seas of bloom (and 

oh, so near to London!) 
And there they say, when dawn is high 

and all the world's a blaze of sky 
The cuckoo, though he's very shy, will 

sing a song for London. 



Narrative Poetry 161 

The nightingale is rather rare and yet 

they say you'll hear him there 
At Kew, at Kew in lilac-time (and oh, so 

near to London!) 
The linnet and the throstle, too, and 

after dark the long halloo 
And golden-eyed tu-whit, tu-whoo of 

owls that ogle London. 
• ••••• 

There's a thief, perhaps, that listens 

with a face of frozen stone, 
In the City as the sun sinks low; 
There's a portly man of business with a 

balance of his own, 
There's a clerk and there's a butcher of 

a soft, reposeful tone, 
And they're all of them returning to the 

heavens they have known; 
They are crammed and jammed in 

busses and — they're each of them 

alone 
In the land where the dead dreams go. 

There's a very modish woman and her 
smile is very bland, 



162 How to Read Poetry 

In the City as the sun sinks low; 

And her hansom jingles onward, but her 
little jeweled hand 

Is clenched a little tighter and she can- 
not understand 

What she wants or why she wanders to 
that undiscovered land, 

For the parties there are not at all the 
sort of thing she planned, 
In the land where the dead dreams go. 



There's a laborer that listens to the 

voices of the dead 
In the City as the sun sinks low ; 
And his hand begins to tremble and his 

face is rather red 
As he sees a loafer watching him and — 

there he turns his head 
And stares into the sunset where his 

April love is fled, 
For he hears her softly singing and his 

lonely soul is led 
Through the lands where the dead 

dreams go. 



Narrative Poetry 163 

There's an old and hardened demi-rep, 

it's ringing in her ears, 
In the City as the sun sinks low; 
With the wild and empty sorrows of the 

love that blights and sears, 
Oh, and if she hurries onward, then be 

sure, be sure she hears, 
Hears and bears the bitter burden of the 

unforgotten years, 
And her laugh's a little harsher and her 

eyes are brimmed with tears 
For the land where the dead dreams 

go. 

There's a barrel-organ caroling across a 

golden street 
In the City as the sun sinks low; 
Though the music's only Verdi there's a 

world to make it sweet 
Just as yonder sunset where the earth 

and heaven meet 
Mellows all the sooty City! Hark, a 

hundred thousand feet 
Are marching on to glory through the 

poppies and the wheat 



164 How to Read Poetry 

In the land where the dead dreams go. 

Come down to Kew in lilac-time, in lilac- 
time, in lilac-time; 

Come down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn't 
far from London!) 

And you shall wander hand in hand with 
Love in summer's wonderland, 

Come down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn't 
far from London!) 

Another remarkable and sharply con- 
trasted poem-story of the soul of a city, like 
that of Noyes in its psychologic insight and 
interpretation, wondrously unlike in all else, 
Ruth Comfort Mitchell names " The Night 
Court." 

11 Call Rose Costara ! " 

Insolent, she comes. 
The watchers, practiced, keen, turn down 

their thumbs. 
The walk, the talk, the face — that sea- 
shell tint — 
It is old stuff; they read her like coarse 
print. 



Narrative Poetry 165 

Here is no hapless innocence waylaid. 

This is a stolid worker at her trade. 

Listening, she yawns; half smiling, un- 
dismayed, 

Shrugging a little at the law's delay, 

Bored and impatient to be on her way. 

It is her eighth conviction. Out beyond 
the rail 

A lady novelist in search of types turns . 
pale. 

She meant to write of them just as she 

found them, 
And with no tears or maudlin glamor 

round them, 
In forceful, virile words, harsh, true 

words, without shame, 
Calling an ugly thing, boldly, an ugly 

name; 
Sympathy, velvet glove, on purpose, iron 

hand. 
But eighth conviction! All the phrases 

she had planned 
Fail; " sullen," " vengeful," no, she isn't 

that. 



1 66 How to Read Poetry 

No, the pink face beneath the hectic hat 
Gives back her own aghast and sickened 

stare 
With a detached and rather cheerful air, 
And then the little novelist sees red. 
From her chaste heart all clemency is 

fled. 
" Oh, loathsome ! venomous ! Off with 

her head ! 
Call Rose Costara ! " But before you 

stop, 
And shelve your decent rage, 

Let's call the cop. 

Let's call the plain-clothes cop who 

brought her in. 
The weary-eyed night watchman of the 

law, 
A shuffling person with a hanging jaw, 
Loose-lipped and Sallow, rather vague 

of chin, 
Comes rubber-heeling at his Honor's 

rap. 
He set and baited and then sprung the 

trap — 



Narrative Poetry 167 

The trap — by his unsavory report. 
Let's ask him why — but first 

Let's call the court. 

Not only the grim figure in the chair, 
Sphinx-like above the waste and wreck- 
age there, 
Skeptical, weary of a retold tale, 
But the whole humming hive, the false, 

the frail — 
An old young woman with a weasel face, 
A lying witness waiting in his place, 
Two ferret lawyers nosing out a case, 
Reporters questioning a Mexican, 
Sobbing her silly heart out for her man, 
Planning to feature her, "lone, desper- 
ate, pretty — " 
Yes, call the court. But wait ! 

Let's call the city. 

Call the community ! Call up, call down, 
Call all the speeding, mad, unheeding 

town ! 
Call rags and tags and then call velvet 

gown! 



1 68 How to Read Poetry 

Go, summon them from tenements and 
clubs, 

On office floors and over steaming tubs ! 

Shout to the boxes and behind the 
scenes, 

Then to the push-carts and the limou- 
sines ! 

Arouse the lecture-room, the cabaret ! 

Confound them with a trumpet-blast and 
say, 

u Are you so dull, so deaf and blind in- 
deed, 

That you mistake the harvest for the 
seed?" 

Condemn them for — but stay ! 

Let's call the code — 

The facile thing they've fashioned to 
their mode : 

Smug sophistries that smother and be- 
fool, 

That numb and stupefy; that clumsy 
thing 

That measures mountains with a three- 
foot rule, 



Narrative Poetry 169 

And plumbs the ocean with a pudding- 
string — 

The little, brittle code. Here is the 
root, 

Far out of sight, and buried safe and 
deep, 

And Rose Costara is the bitter fruit. 

On every limb and leaf, death, ruin, 
creep. 

So, lady novelist, go home again. 
Rub biting acid on your little pen. 
Look back and out and up and in, and 

then 
Write that it is no job for pruning- 

shears. 
Tell them to dig for years and years and 

years 
The twined and twisted roots. Blot out 

the page; 
Invert the blundering order of the age; 
Reverse the scheme : the last shall be the 

first. 
Summon the system, starting with the 

worst — 



170 How to Read Poetry 

The lying, dying code ! On, down the 

line, 
The city, and the court, the cop. Assign 
The guilt, the blame, the shame I Sting, 

lash, and spur ! 
Call each and all ! Call us ! And then 

call her ! 

Who, with a heart to feel, a mind to think, 
a soul to strain at its leashing conventions, 
could help being moved by such a poem, 
whether or no previously arrayed against 
poetry in the abstract? Leaving these, with 
inevitable memory of Hood's tragic " Bridge 
of Sighs," Florence Wilkinson's "The 
Flower Makers," and kindred stirring themes 
of the city; with Masefield's u The Daffodil 
Fields " and Robert Frost's New England 
story-poems to perform similarly suggestive 
service in behalf of the poetic realism of less 
metropolitan regions : let us think, for a mo- 
ment, of those romantic poems, both of pre- 
vious and the present era, that are so closely 
akin to poetic drama. 

The " Canterbury Tales," the Arthurian 



Narrative Poetry 171 

poem-legends, the Icelandic Sagas, are all, of 
course, impossible of present reproduction 
as the folk-songs of our own Red Indians — 
although the reader sickened with war, bored 
by business, and wearily longing for genuine 
intellectual refreshment is earnestly recom- 
mended to them; but poem-stories like By- 
ron's "Manfred," Hogg's u Kilmeny" and 
Scott's " Marmion," to say nothing of such 
present-day kin as sundry Kipling tale- 
ballads and Masefield's " Dauber," are 
rich in the quickening qualities of stirring 
event and rapid action that most of us, 
whether in prose or poetry, greatly prize. 
Actual dramas, even though in poetic form 
strictly belonging to poetry's sister art of the 
theater, need not now receive attention, but 
the dramatic poems instanced, with others 
by John G. Neihardt, Lindsay, and countless 
contemporary and classic poets at least will 
bridge the friendly chasm for those who 
would follow poetry across the narrow bor- 
der to the poem-drama realm. 

To this realm the Browning classics, too 
well known to need even passing mention, 



172 How to Read Poetry 

and such contemporary specimens as Mase- 
field's " Philip the King," Lily A. Long's 
11 Radisson," and Josephine Preston Pea- 
body's incomparable u The Piper," with 
poetic-dramatic fantasies such as Cloyd 
Head's " Grotesques" and the queer 
" Mines " of Alfred Kreymborg, will provide 
delightful introduction. Again such hero- 
tales as Masefield's " Rosas" and Noyes' 
" Drake" may well be employed in the 
friendly capacity of bridge. 

Since practically every poet of distinction 
has done good work in the way of poetic 
description, natural, imaginative or psycho- 
logic; since lines, stanzas, poems, must spring 
at will to the memory of almost every reader ; 
and since indication rather than technical 
showing forth is the present object, descrip- 
tive poetry, as such alone, shall not now be 
directly analyzed or considered. Plentiful 
example has occurred in connection with 
other poetic phases. Apt and fascinating 
quotation might run on forever. But few, 
surely, could conclude this bird's-eye glimpse 
of the picked poetic area without conscious 



Narrative Poetry 173 

impulsion to make this wide and fascinating 
area their own. 

Let those uncertain as to just what kind 
of poetic fare will prove most pleasing begin 
with the simpler, more dramatic or descrip- 
tive narrative poems that have proved such 
long and sterling friends to other readers. 
From such beginning has dawned and dated 
many a strong love of poetry in all its many 
forms. 



IN FLANDERS' FIELDS 

In Flanders' fields the poppies blow 
Between the crosses, row on row, 
That mark our place ; and in the sky 
The larks, still bravely singing, fly 
Scarce heard amid the guns below. 

We are the Dead. Short days ago 
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, 
Loved and were loved, and now we lie 
In Flanders' fields. 

Take up our quarrel with the foe : 
To you from falling hands we throw 
The torch; be yours to hold it high. 
If ye break faith with us who die 
We shall not sleep, though poppies blow 
In Flanders' fields. 

— John McCrae. 



175 



CHAPTER VII 

THE CASE FOR THE DEFENSE 

HERE, then, is the conclusion of the 
whole matter: 

Everybody should read poetry. 

Why? 

Because everybody loves it. (For particu- 
lars see Chapter I.) 

Again, why? 

Because everybody loves, needs, desires, 
seeks enjoyment, and the reading of poetry, 
properly performed and pursued, makes for 
universal enjoyment of high, rich, rare, inex- 
pensive, highly diversified, never-ending and 
ever-vernal order. (For further particulars 
see Chapter II. 

How, then, to extract this enjoyment from 
poetry, to cause poetry reading to yield its 
rare treasures in plain and painless manner, 
in a word, "How to Read Poetry?" 

Why, good sir or madam, perfectly simple 
and easy. Read poetry just as you would 

176 



The Case for the Defense 177 

bathe or dress or write a letter or eat your 
dinner or play golf or take a car down town. 

Suit the action to the time, the food to the 
appetite, the clothing to the weather, the 
poetry to the mood, the nature, the taste. 

If you like "old" poetry, read "old" 
poetry and don't be ashamed to admit that 
you like and read it. 

If you prefer "new" poetry, read that 
and don't be ashamed of reading it, either. 

If you naturally enjoy standard poetry of 
grave or classic order, so much the better; 
you have much to enjoy and may rejoice in 
a life supply of the preferred poetic dainty. 

If your taste runs to the simplest of verse, 
to tender love lyrics, the least impressive of 
"home and mother" jingles, the most primi- 
tive of war songs or "poems of passion," 
why, have you not still great cause for rejoic- 
ing? You are indubitably fortunate in that 
the supply always will more than equal the 
demand. 

If you like poetry of all kinds, read poetry 
of all kinds and don't think the case requires 
apology, explanation, nor any attention other 



178 How to Read Poetry 

than matter-of-fact, pleased and natural ao r 
ceptance. Why should one deprecate or ex- 
plain intellectual, emotional likings any more 
than physical appetites in the way of food or 
drink? 

In a word, once more, read whatever 
poetry you like, and if you don't think you 
really like any begin at once to experiment, 
to read all kinds until you discover — as you 
surely will sooner or later and probably 
sooner — which kind you like best. (For 
encouraging assistance read Chapters ill, IV, 
v, and VI.) 

But don't, as you would do yourself justice, 
read Byron when your soul hungers for spir- 
itual sustenance, nor Keats with the war-guns 
roaring, nor Masters when you long to 
be stirred or stimulated or soothed. The 
music of a pipe organ, remember, is admir- 
ably fitted for inspiring or encouraging re- 
ligious meditation, but it is not well suited to 
quickstep marching or the dancing of a fan- 
dango; a fife and drum corps, similarly, 
would provide but a poor lullaby or waltz 
measure. There are times when Noyes' 



The Case for the Defense 179 

lovely lilting cloys the stiffened senses like 
honey, when the rhythmic realism of Sand- 
burg is maddening, the Tennysonian senti- 
mentality quite too much to bear. 

In a word, yet once more, read poetry with 
reason, with the invaluable support of this 
chapter, and, in addition, with the aid of this 
(softly whispered) watchword and secret: 

Use Your Common Sense. 



THE HAPPIEST HEART 

Who 'drives the horses of the sun 

Shall lord it but a day; 
Better the lowly deed were done, 

And kept the humble way. 

The rust will find the sword of fame, 
The dust will hide the crown ; 

Ay, none shall nail so high his name 
Time will not tear it down. 

The happiest heart that ever beat 

Was in some quiet breast 
That found the common daylight sweet, 

And left to Heaven the rest. 

— John Vance Cheney. 



iSo 



